As Jürgen Klopp leads Liverpool into what could be their final meeting with Manchester City while he is in the dugout, it is hard to escape the feeling that their rivalry defined his stay at Anfield.
By Jack Lusby, ThisIsAnfield.com
Though two of the closest sides in the Premier League in a geographical sense – with around 35 miles and an hour on the motorway separating Anfield and the Etihad – Liverpool and Manchester City could not be further apart in many ways.
Ask the neutrals and neither would be a popular choice, but there is little denying that Liverpool’s ethos is a positive antithesis of a club with 115 charges for flouting spending rules still looming over them.
But there is an inescapable sense that, as silly as it may sound, neither Liverpool or Manchester City would be where they are without the other.
Pep Guardiola certainly feels that way.
“The dimension of success is the dimension of a rival. When a rival is not good enough, your success is not big enough,” he told TNT Sports in February. “But competing with this Liverpool for many years – this one and the previous ones – and sometimes beat them, it shows how good we have done. It’s the same with them I think when they beat us. It is the best measure to realise what we have done as a team.”
Guardiola has voiced this opinion on countless occasions in recent years, but this time he was speaking not long after the news that his long-term rival, Jürgen Klopp, will depart Liverpool and the Premier League at the end of the season.
Unless the two sides are pitted against each other in the FA Cup, Sunday will bring the final clash between Liverpool and Manchester City before Klopp takes a long-awaited sabbatical.
It will be his 25th meeting with the Manchester club since being appointed Liverpool manager in 2015, and more broadly, his 30th encounter with Guardiola across spells with Borussia Dortmund and his current club. The record favours him in both regards: Liverpool have won 10, drawn six and lost eight of those 24 games, while Klopp has 12 wins from his 29 meetings with Guardiola, who himself has won 11.
The first shoots of a modern rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester City cropped up before Guardiola made his way to England, with a 4-1 win at the Etihad in November 2015 cementing the blueprint of Klopp’s success.
Manuel Pellegrini was still in the dugout for Manchester City and it was only a month-and-a-half into Klopp’s reign, but the gruelling double sessions at Melwood throughout October and November paid off in a suffocating display from Liverpool. Roberto Firmino, who found himself baffled by predecessor Brendan Rodgers using him as a wing-back, was stationed as a false nine, with Philippe Coutinho playing off him on the left.
The victory brought Firmino’s first goal for the club, and the Reds showed the first real signs of Klopp’s dominant, high-pressing 4-3-3 coming into life.
Klopp was never dogmatic, but the arrival of Guardiola to the Premier League – and the re-ignition of their rivalry in Germany – was clearly influential in the tactical evolution of his Liverpool side. The same can be said of Manchester City, with Klopp and Guardiola continually tweaking their systems seemingly to thwart each other; there was a serendipity, then, when both brought in out-and-out No. 9s in 2022 as Darwin Núñez and Erling Haaland made their way to the north-west.
That tactical to-and-fro has led to an exhilarating series of encounters between the two clubs. For Liverpool, that featured a run of three consecutive victories over Manchester City in 2018, including a 5-1 aggregate win over two legs in the Champions League quarter-finals. There was a blistering first-half display in the eventual 3-2 victory in the semi-finals of the FA Cup in 2022, while the 3-1 win at Anfield in 2019 gave Liverpool a major advantage as they surged to the Premier League title.
There have been heavy scorelines in favour of the Manchester club, too, most notably the 5-0 in the league in 2017 marked by Sadio Mane’s red card for a high-foot challenge on Ederson. There was a 4-1 win at Anfield in 2021 as Alisson endured a rare off-day, while Guardiola’s side blew Liverpool away in another 4-1 victory at the tail end of last season.
While Liverpool’s recent meetings with Chelsea – and notably the three domestic finals – have been notorious for their lack of goals, that has rarely been the case for clashes with Manchester City. Only once under Klopp and Guardiola has there been a 0-0 between the two sides – in October 2018 – while there have been four or more goals scored in nine of the last 12 fixtures.
The two managers are football purists, and it is that – and the sheer quality of talent on the pitch – which has made Liverpool and Manchester City the two genuine box-office sides in England.
That has underpinned Klopp’s success and is a big factor behind his longevity in the Premier League; every protagonist needs the right antagonist, and Manchester City so starkly oppose his ideals, but there is also a genuine respect that acknowledges they have brought the best out of each other.
So when the final whistle blows at Anfield at around 6pm on Sunday evening, there will be a poignancy regardless of the result.
But as Manchester City still search for top gear in their season-after-the-treble season, the significance of it likely being Klopp’s final clash with Liverpool’s modern rivals should give them the edge the Reds need.
(Images from IMAGO)
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