Pep Guardiola plays down claims about Arsenal’s “dark arts”, says referees must judge game management and insists there are “more important things” in the world.
Pep Guardiola has pushed back against the increasingly loud and boring debate over Arsenal’s supposed “dark arts”, insisting there are far more serious issues in the world and making clear that, in his view, questions of game management are for referees rather than rival managers to police.
In a season where Arsenal’s set pieces and time-keeping have been pored over in forensic detail, and repeatedly framed as something close to a moral failing, Guardiola’s intervention lands as an unexpected, corrective on the eve of the League Cup final.
Across recent months, opponents and commentators have lined up to accuse Arsenal of crossing an ill-defined line. Many have spoken about “dark arts” at corners and “meat walls”. Asterisks have been suggested should Arsenal win the title, while others have fixated on how long Mikel Arteta’s side take over restarts and corners and throw-ins. TV analysis has highlighted their corner routines and time taken at goal kicks in a way rarely applied to other sides. If it was, everybody would see that it’s all a fabricated nonsense (well, apart from the time taken at corners, that is true).
It was in that context that Guardiola was asked, two days before Arsenal and Manchester City meet in the EFL Cup final, about the criticism Arsenal is receiving.
His answer was unambiguous. “Look what happens around the world, we are becoming in an incredible chaos and nobody moves one finger,” he said on Friday afternoon.
“Everything is behind the scenes. The world is going to collapse and still we are here talking about either dark arts of one team or another team. There are more important things than that.”
Rather than joining the chorus against Arsenal, Guardiola also placed responsibility on officials and organisers, pointing out that managers will always push the limits and that it is up to “referees” to decide where those limits lie.
For Arsenal, repeatedly singled out this season for practices that have long been part of the game, that stance amounts to a public rejection of the idea that what they are doing is uniquely problematic. it won’t matter.
Guardiola also shut down any attempt to turn the issue into a personal feud with his former assistant.
Regarding his relationship with Arteta, he explained that he does not have time to go out for dinner together and that if what the journalist wanted was to create a conflict, he is “too old to get into that.”
Arteta, for his part, responded later: “He lives in Manchester, I in London and we manage two different clubs. But my feelings have not changed at all. He has been my inspiration since I was little and that is never going to change.”
In other words, while parts of the media continue to cast Arsenal as villains of some “dark arts” storyline, both managers have been keen to highlight mutual respect and to put the whole controversy in its proper place, which for Guardiola is firmly below the genuinely serious problems facing the wider world.
As it should be for all of us.