Guardiola v Mourinho — this time it’s for real
manchester — After the phony war of their first season in Manchester, the rivalry between Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola will resume for real in Sunday’s seismic derby showdown at Old Trafford.
The two managers renewed acquaintances at the beginning of last season after Mourinho took the reins at Manchester United and Guardiola set up shop across town at Manchester City.
Guardiola claimed first blood, leading City to a 2-1 win at Old Trafford in September 2016, but both teams fell by the wayside thereafter, finishing the campaign well adrift of Premier League champions Chelsea.
Fifteen games into the new season, City are eight points clear of United at the head of the table and Sunday’s game is being billed as Mourinho’s big chance to stick a spoke in Guardiola’s wheels.
“We have a big week, with Swansea and Tottenham following the United game,” says City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne.
“If we lost two out of three and they win everything, they are there.” The arrival in Manchester of the two pre-eminent managers of the age stoked the embers of a bitter personal rivalry that had crackled with blistering intensity during the two years they spent in opposing camps in Spain. Mourinho’s first season at Real Madrid in 2010-11 culminated in an infamously spiky series of matches against Guardiola’s Barcelona, who would have the last laugh by claiming a La Liga and Champions League double.
Mourinho nourished the hostility, villainously jabbing his finger in the eye of Guardiola’s assistant, the late Tito Vilanova, during a Spanish Super Cup match in 2011.
Madrid finished the 2011-12 season as champions and Guardiola, worn out by the constant sniping, stepped down at Camp Nou and would not resurface at Bayern Munich for another year.
The men’s September 2016 reunion promised much, Guardiola’s slick City wiping the floor with United in the first half before a Claudio Bravo blunder enabled Zlatan Ibrahimovic to make a game of it in the second. But by the time of their most recent meeting, at the Etihad Stadium in April, thoughts of an all-Manchester title shootout had vanished. —