Children being killed in Gaza ‘hurts all my body’, says soccer coach Pep Guardiola, warning: ‘Our children will be next’

Soccer coach Pep Guardiola, the manager of Manchester City F.C. in the U.K., caused considerable controversy when he insinuated that Israel was purposefully killing children in Gaza and warned that the next children to die “will be ours.”

The speech came when Guardiola, 54, received an honorary degree from the University of Manchester for his success in the nine years he managed the club, as well as for his Guardiola Sala Foundation, which “strives to support the most disadvantaged” in society.

“It's so painful what we see in Gaza. It hurts my whole body,” Guardiola said, according to several video clips circulating on social media.

“It's not about ideology. It's not about whether I'm right or you're wrong. It's just about the love of life, about the care of your neighbour. Maybe we think that [when] we see the boys and girls of four years old being killed by the bomb or being killed at the hospital because it's not a hospital anymore, it's not our business.”

“But be careful. The next one will be ours. The next four- or five-year-old kids will be ours. Sorry, but I see my kids, Maria, Marius and Valentina. When I see every morning since the nightmare started the infants in Gaza, I'm so scared.”

“Maybe this image feels far away from where we are living now, and you might ask what we can do,” Guardiola continued, adding the wars in Ukraine and Sudan were also “deeply” troubling him.

“There is a story I'm reminded of. A forest is on fire. All the animals live terrified, helpless. But a small bird flies back and forth to the sea, carrying drops of water in its little beak.”

“A snake laughs, and asks: ‘Why bro? You will never put the fire out.’ The bird replies: ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘Then why do you do it again and again?’, the snake asks once again. ‘I'm just doing my part,’ the bird replies for the last time. The bird knows it won't stop the fire, but it refused to do nothing.”

“That story reminds me the power of one is not about the scale, it's about choice, about showing up, about refusing to be silent or still when it matters most,” the former soccer player concluded.

Over the past years, Guardiola has waded into political controversy several times, particularly over his support for Catalonian independence from Spain.

The Catalan national movement is generally considered anti-Israel, and the region’s capital Barcelona cut its ties to Israel earlier this year over the Gaza War.

The Barcelona city council cut all institutional ties with the Israeli government and suspended a friendship agreement with the city of Tel Aviv, alleging violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinians.

“The suffering and death in Gaza over the past year and a half, and recent attacks by the Israeli government, make any relationship unviable,” Barcelona’s Mayor Jaume Collboni said at the time.