Guardiola and Klopp have built a duel worthy of status as English clásico
Jürgen Klopp says this will not be the title decider. OK, Jürgen. If you say so, Jürgen. Perhaps we can safely file that away with “every opponent is a tough opponent” and “we don’t look at the league table” in the catalogue of great managerial sleights of our time. The rest of us, meanwhile, are entitled to regard Manchester City v Liverpool for what it is: a fixture that has been burning a hole in the schedule since August, that as the weeks passed was anticipated first in hope, then in expectation, and now finally in a barely disguised longing.
It is more than five years since Klopp and Pep Guardiola first clapped eyes on each other across a crowded Premier League technical area. In that time they have built a rivalry that in terms of sheer brutish footballing quality may be the finest English football has seen. The game is fitter and faster, more complex and refined than it has ever been. The Norwich City of 2022 would wipe the floor with Manchester United’s class of 1992. And at the vanguard of the revolution, these two coaches, these two clubs: a duel worthy of being anointed as England’s clásico, a buffet of the very finest fare this sport has to offer.
When Guardiola describes Liverpool as “the toughest opponent I have faced in my 13 years as a manager” – above sides such as José Mourinho’s Real Madrid, Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid and Antonio Conte’s Chelsea – you get some idea of the levels here.
Not since the 1980s, perhaps before that, has English football been able to boast indisputably the best two teams in the world. And in order to grasp the magnitude of what Guardiola and Klopp have achieved it is instructive to go back to their first meeting in England, an ugly and unlovable 1-0 Liverpool
win at Anfield on the last day of 2016. Liverpool looked ragged and brittle. City looked disjointed and uncertain. The teamsheets from that day are a reminder of the crude raw materials these blue-chip coaches initially had to work with: Ragnar Klavan and Emre Can, Claudio Bravo and Nicolás Otamendi. Only four players on each side are still at the club. Gini Wijnaldum’s winning header was one of three shots on target. “We don’t want to show how good we are, we want the points,” a drained and dissatisfied Klopp insisted afterwards.
In terms of outlook, City and Liverpool have come curiously full circle. For Guardiola and Klopp, at the very outset results were the thing: the points on the board that would earn them the time and space to express their vision. Then, from about 2018 to 2020, came the great leap forward: the years of discovery and wonder, of rebirth and reconstruction, two teams exploring the outer limits of their potential, tactically and stylistically and emotionally. The blueprints are firmly established. The terms of engagement are familiar. Audiences both partisan and neutral instinctively know how these teams will look and feel. Once more, it really is just about the score.
And yet for numerous reasons familiarity is yet to breed staleness. This will be the first meeting between City and Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium in 17 months, the first there for more than three years to be soundtracked by the noise and songs of fans, rather than the hollow clatter of empty plastic seats in the wind. They will meet on Sunday afternoon, and then again at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final next Saturday, and possibly for a third time in Paris in the Champions League final in May. Things are about to get intimate.
Perhaps even a little rancorous. For all their mutual admiration on a professional level, there is no great personal warmth between Guardiola and Klopp. After all, for all their similarities they are hugely contrasting personalities: Pep the brooding introvert and Jürgen the beaming extrovert; Pep the gnomic genius whose mind remains essentially unknowable, Jürgen the motormouth who can’t help but tell you what he’s thinking. Klopp gets that football is not real life. Guardiola gets that, actually, it kind of is. Throw these guys into a full-scale, triple-trophy fist fight, and don’t be surprised if one or both eventually cracks.
For the fans, too, this has become an unusually pointed and bitter conflict, from Liverpool’s ambush of the City team bus before their Champions League fixture in 2018 to City’s frequent complaints of pro-Liverpool bias among the footballing authorities, referees, the media.
This in itself is a reasonably new development. The Wikipedia page devoted to the rivalry was created in late 2019. And yet at the heart of the tribal malice between Liverpool and City fans is an insoluble paradox: the idea that whether it be City’s state-backed money or Liverpool’s history and tradition, they alone are the courageous underdog insurgents railing against The Power.
The paradox being that for all their strong sense of anti-establishment identity, City and Liverpool are essentially the establishment now. Both were part of last year’s soiled Super League breakaway. Both are among the seven richest clubs in the world, even if the source of City’s revenue remains a source of considerable controversy.
In footballing and financial terms, from pressing to scouting, from culture to commercial instinct, they are the exemplary models, the template of how to build a super-club. Guardiola and Klopp will be the most sought-after coaches in the game when they finally call it a day in the north-west. In their own ways, City and Liverpool are the ultimate expression of modern football, for better and for worse.
As for the game itself: well, who knows? How brave do Liverpool feel? What attacking combination will Guardiola go with? How will Liverpool’s defence cope against a team that will force it to defend more than any other? Has Mohamed Salah rediscovered his form? Do Liverpool have the deeper bench these days?
A taut, cautious draw is the likeliest result, followed by the City win that would probably kill off the title race, followed by the Liverpool win that would put them two points clear with seven games remaining. What feels certain is that something will break here, something will end here, one way or the other. The pressure is simply too high, the stakes too irredeemable, the margins of error too fine. Both sides are relatively free of injuries. The recent international break means they will be well rested. No hiding place, and no excuses.
And yet, as much as this feels like a dynastic era in English football, we are probably already nearer its end than its beginning. Klopp has been at Anfield for six and a half years; Guardiola at the Etihad for almost six. The City v Liverpool rivalry meant little before they arrived and will probably go back to meaning little after they depart. All the more reason, then, to cherish this fleeting alignment of the fates: to revel in the sort of game that tells us not merely where football is right now, but where it might be heading.
City and Liverpool are the ultimate expression of modern football, for better or worse