Pep Guardiola is a genius as a football coach. Stick a curly, white, horsehair wig on him and, judging by his performance in his press conference on Friday afternoon, he’d make a decent counsel for the defence, too.
His scarcely concealed anger that his formidably powerful, fabulously wealthy, serially successful, meticulously managed football club has been called to account by the Premier League seemed to win all manner of support from the jury.
He made a reference to Julius Caesar — ‘Julius Caesar said in this world there are no enemies or friends, there are just interests’ — but this was Guardiola not as Caesar but as Mark Antony.