The history of a rivalry that has suddenly turned spiteful
LiverpooL and Manchester City have certainly had their moments. When City arrived at Anfield on Boxing Day 1981, their goalkeeper Joe Corrigan was hit with a glass bottle thrown from the Kop and their manager John Bond told his players to lie on the floor as the bus was pelted with missiles on the way out. City had won 3-1.
But after years of sharing a common foe — Manchester United — rather than a mutual hatred, a very 21st century kind of enmity has taken hold over the past five years between the contestants of tomorrow’s title-defining game.
it was never more vivid than on a May night in London in 2014 when Greg Dyke, chairman of the FA, stood up to speak at the end-ofseason football writers’ dinner. effusing about Brendan rodgers’ Liverpool, Dyke neglected to mention City had beaten them to the title by two points.
City staff were seething, but also resigned to what they consider a truth about the world they occupy. Liverpool get a disproportionate amount of acclaim. The number of ex-Liverpool players in the studios has been a fixation for some at a club whose own lack of glory in the late 20th century leaves them with few Tv voices of their own.
Liverpool bring the romantic story of european quests and 30 tortured years seeking to win the league — a mission often thwarted by the continent’s financial powerhouses, including City, stealing crown jewels such as raheem Sterling, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez, and philippe Coutinho.
They were convinced 10 years ago that Gareth Barry might be theirs, though City, in the early stages of their giant spending, snapped him up. They feared that City would take Sterling and they were right. Liverpool feel there has been a sense of natural justice about James Milner, another one snapped up by City, rejecting etihad overtures to stay and becoming a crucial member of Jurgen Klopp’s team in 2015 because he wanted regular first-team football more than money.
This David v Goliath line is oversimplified. Liverpool have spent hugely too. But City struggle with the narrative which casts them as
arrivistes, back at the top table purely because of the Abu Dhabi petro-dollars. They’ve made some of the most imaginative buys of the last decade — David Silva, Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne. Yet they also labour with an image of having ridden roughshod over Financial Fair play rules.
FFp has fuelled a deep mutual suspicion between the two clubs.
City view it as a system designed to enshrine the power of football’s establishment and keep out new challengers such as them.
Liverpool insist that’s nonsense. Their owner, John W Henry, said in his first meeting with British newspaper journalists in 2010, that it did not matter he lacked ‘a “Sheik” in front of my name’ because FFp would deliver a level playing field. The club made it clear they expected strong action by UeFA when City breached the rules.
City have used their wealth extremely wisely, creating the premier League’s most sophisticated commercial operation. They also redefined player acquisition, creating a system under executive Brian Marwood in which targets
are identified early and pursued methodically and strategically.
Liverpool have looked to borrow from those methods in ways which have been murky. The club legitimately poached three senior members of City’s player acquisition team — current sporting director Michael Edwards, Dave Fallows and Barry Hunter. But they also had to pay £1million compensation to City after being accused of hacking into one of their scouting databases on hundreds of occasions between 2012 and 2013. The FA are investigating that.
Until now, the old forms of handto-hand combat between big rivals — managers like Sir Alex Ferguson and Rafa Benitez digging away at each other in press conferences — have been few. Guardiola and Klopp view this as wasted energy.
But the picture is changing. Guardiola’s jibe about Sadio Mane’s diving at Villa Park last week was most telling for its revelation that within minutes of his side winning, he knew the small details of the booking. Klopp returned the grenade with a hint that City are fixated on Liverpool.
Though there have been gushing comments about Guardiola from Klopp, he has a way of suggesting that he and his side are the freer spirits. ‘Pep looks better when he’s shouting,’ Klopp said, damning Guardiola with faint praise last season. ‘Pep always looks perfect — body, clothes, everything. When I shout, I look like a serial killer.’
Klopp leads their all-time record across Germany and England, winning eight games to Guardiola’s seven, with two draws. That’s if you count a shootout victory for Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund in the 2015 German Cup and City’s win on penalties in this season’s Community Shield. Given the greater resources at Guardiola’s disposal, this is a good return for Klopp.
The tirade on officials preceding Guardiola’s dismissal to the stands in the second leg of the 2017-18 Champions League quarter-final — which Liverpool won 5-1 on aggregate — provided a sense of the Merseyside club getting under his skin. But Klopp can be extremely sensitive when things do not go his way.
In many ways, the stakes are the highest that the Premier League has ever known because this game brings together the two outstanding sides in the land, who have left the old guard, United and Arsenal, looking like dinosaurs in the mist.
‘United always made us feel we had something in common,’ says one source who has known this match from the inside at City. ‘We never felt we were going into hell at Anfield. But things have certainly changed. There’s a lot more needle now.’
Guardiola and Klopp will want to keep the lid on things but this will be interesting. The whole thing could blow.