Guardiola coming across as ignorant in tweet row

City manager is doing Bernardo no favours by leaping to his defence, writes James Ducker

For a highly intelligent man, Pep Guardiola’s latest staunch defence of Bernardo Silva’s controversial tweet about his Manchester City team-mate, Benjamin Mendy, was at risk of appearing rather ignorant.

“It’s a cartoon and the face is quite similar,” the City manager said of Bernardo’s decision to post a picture of Mendy as a child next to the image of a mascot for a Spanish chocolate peanut brand that drew condemnation from Kick It Out for racial stereotyping.

“The same happened a thousand million times with white people. It’s the same. It was just a joke and that’s all.”

Except it is not “the same”, is it? A white person being compared to another white person is not the same as a black person being compared to a chocolate peanut in public by a white man and is unlikely ever to be.

And, even if Mendy was happy enough to accept the comparison as banter, it ceased to become what Guardiola has been keen to peddle as a “joke” the moment Bernardo made his tweet public.

Mendy himself might not have taken offence, but there are black people who have taken offence to the City playmaker’s social media post and all its connotations.

Guardiola seems to have taken criticism of Bernardo’s behaviour as a concerted assault on the Portugal international himself and, in becoming tetchy in his defence, is giving the impression he feels the accusation of racism, rather than the tweet, is the problem here.

It does not matter how nice Bernardo is, or how many languages he speaks, neither excuse the tweet, and it looks even worse when viewed alongside an Instagram video the Portuguese posted last year in which he asked Mendy – dressed all in black – why he was naked. Some will argue it crosses a line even if it had remained private, but make such a video public and he leaves himself wide open to accusations of racism.

Whether he is punished by the Football Association or not, it is hoped he learns from the unsavoury episode. Unfortunately, his manager is doing him few favours.