Do we like them?

Do we like Pep Guardiola?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent and on the right side of the harm test, with a real stain from the owners he worked for and a contested stance on Gaza.

Guardiola spent ten years in charge at Manchester City before stepping down in May 2026, after a run that included six Premier League titles and a Champions League. He came to City after stints in Germany and Spain, and he's a Catalan who has never kept his politics in the boot room. In 2018 the English FA fined him £20,000 for wearing a yellow ribbon for jailed Catalan politicians.

The big stain isn't his, strictly, but he's tied to it. In late September 2026 an independent commission found City guilty of the Premier League's financial charges, including sham sponsorship deals said to have inflated revenue and understated costs by more than £900 million. The club says it's innocent and will appeal, and nothing I read has the commission making any finding about Guardiola himself.

On the harm test, he passes. Nothing turned up from him about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, and he has been on the receiving end himself: Real Madrid fans were reportedly heard chanting homophobic abuse at him in a 2025 match, per Marca. Politically he's gone the other way, speaking out on Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and US immigration-agency killings, and he asked how anyone could defend the shooting of a nurse in the US.

Critics also point out that City's owner is a UAE official, and US officials have reportedly concluded that he played a central role in arming Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, which the UAE denies. An activist told Middle East Eye that Guardiola's condemnation of wars doesn't connect to that. That's the asterisk: he speaks loudly about everyone's suffering and quietly about whose money paid him.

The good stuff is real. His foundation has supported a Salvation Army five-a-side tournament in Manchester that raises awareness of homelessness, and in October 2026, now out of the dugout, he fronted a video for UNRWA's Gaza appeal. He said “Silence today is a way of taking sides, but we cannot look the other way.” Whether you agree with every line, he's putting his name behind people who have nobody else.