Pep: My wife rang after the bomb. . .then line went dead
PEP GUARDIOLA was at his city- centre apartment with his son, Marius, when his phone rang. It was his wife cristina, who had taken the couple’s daughters Valentina and Maria to an Ariana Grande concert around half a mile away at the Manchester Arena.
‘The line broke,’ he explains. ‘She told me, “Something happened and we are running but I don’t know what”, and the line broke.’ Guardiola and his son made their way to the venue, where a suicide bomber had struck, and for several agonising minutes they were in the dark.
‘We went to the arena and after five or six minutes she rang again and said, “We are out, we’re coming back home”. We were lucky. Many people suffered. Life is like this. We were in a better position than many unfortunate ones.’
The story is one of a number of revealing insights uncovered in an hour-long interview with radio 5 Live in which the Manchester city boss selects his eight favourite songs. One of those is Oasis’s
Don’t Look Back In Anger, the unofficial anthem adopted by Manchester after the terror attack, in which 22 innocent fans of the US singer perished.
‘I love this song, you cannot imagine how much,’ Guardiola says. ‘It is incredible. It puts me in the best of myself when I listen — it’s a masterpiece. I like that, after what happened at the arena, now it is a song for the people.’ The 47-year-old, who appears to be a big fan of Frank Sinatra after choosing two Ol’ Blue Eyes tracks, reveals he now sees himself as a ‘Mancunian for the rest of my life’ — so much so that he could not manage another club in England. But he adds he is treated with respect by United fans around town. ‘It’s nice,’ he says. ‘The rivalry is necessary. There’s a respect. It’s not a problem.’
Guardiola lifts the lid on his 2012 dinner with Sir Alex Ferguson during his new York sabbatical and voices respect for the Glaswegian, who is recovering from a brain haemorrhage. ‘When I saw him at Old Trafford again with the crowd clapping, he deserves it,’ says Guardiola. ‘I’m so happy he is doing well.’
Guardiola adds that he is not religious, but may yet be convinced by city coach Brian Kidd (‘One of the loveliest people in my life’), who goes to church weekly.
There is also humour. Guardiola reveals it is the absence of light, rather than the presence of rain, which can get him down in Manchester and also chooses Elton John’s Your Song, in which the former Watford chairman declares that his gift is his song. When asked what his own gift is, Guardiola laughs before responding: ‘I think I’m good at football.’