JURGEN KLOPP AND Pep Guardiola have been the Premier League’s greatest managerial rivalry since Wenger and Ferguson, and today they joust in the Premier League for the final time, with Klopp hoping to launch one last great counter-offensive before Guardiola wins the war.
Klopp is the last surviving ideological rebuke to Guardiola. To put it crudely, Guardiola made a virtue of having the ball, and Klopp responded by making a virtue of being able to rob it.
Their characters have always been exquisitely contrasted, too. Where Guardiola cuts the figure of a detatched intellectual who wears a polo neck and swirls a glass of red wine as he talks airily of the genius of Ingmar Bergman, Klopp seems more likely to buy you a beer and laugh uproariously about Jason Statham’s latest schlock.
“Our styles are not similar but I like a lot the way they play”, said Guardiola ahead of his first Premier League meeting with Klopp in 2016.
The battle lines have blurred over the years, and ideas have migrated either side of the divide. Klopp has inverted Trent Alexander-Arnold and built a more technical midfield, for instance, while Guardiola has learned to prioritise physical strength and stature.
But when Klopp leaves, he will take with him the contrasts that have made this rivalry so great.
He is the last man standing at the top of the English game whose principles were developed in opposition to Guardiola, rather than alongside him. Guardiola’s old assistant Mikel Arteta has utterly reshaped Arsenal, while one of his former midfielders, Xabi Alonso, looks most likely to succeed Klopp at Liverpool.
Further down the table, Erik ten Hag worked with Guardiola at Bayern Munich while Ange Postecoglou, a fabulously original mind in many ways, earned his biggest break in club football by working for City’s multi-group model, who are patenting and exporting Guardiola’s ideas.
So regardless of what happens this afternoon and across the rest of the season, Guardiola will go down as the best and most influential manager in Britain since Alex Ferguson. Klopp, however, is a genius in his own right, and his relentless insurgency has effectively legitimised the Premier League in this era of City’s dominance. Who’s to say he doesn’t have one last revolt left in him?
As we ready ourselves for their final meeting, let’s take a look back at the side’s Premier League clashes at Anfield over the years.
2016/17 – Liverpool 1-0 Manchester City
This game on New Year’s Eve certainly did not portend the classics that were to come between this sides, as Georginio Wijnaldum’s early header settled a pretty drab game.
The result put Liverpool second, six points from Antonio Conte’s relentless Chelsea side. Jurgen Klopp spoke proudly of his side’s defensive performance, given they had contrived to turn a 3-1 lead away to Bournemouth into a 4-3 defeat a couple of weeks earlier.
This wasn’t the all-out attacking performance that Liverpool would pilot against City in later seasons, as they withdrew and counter-attacked as the second half went on. It was effective nonetheless.
It seems impossible to imagine now, but Guardiola’s first season was regularly scored to pundits’ smug claims that the great man wouldn’t be able to hack it in England. These were pretty loud after this game, which left City 10 points off the top.
Those takes haven’t exactly aged gracefully. This was a strong City team, but one not yet cut out for Guardiola’s demands. Of the players involved that day, only John Stones and Kevin de Bruyne will be involved on Sunday.
Both sides were a work in progress, but if Liverpool looked a step ahead, City stole a march with an absurdly successful transfer window the following summer, with all of Ederson, Bernardo Silva, Aymeric Laporte, Benjamin Mendy, Danilo, and Kyle Walker arriving to play transformative roles.
2017/18 – Liverpool 4-3 Manchester City
The game to kickstart the rivalry. City’s beefed-up, Guardiola-calibrated squad were cantering to the league title, having won 20 and drawn two of their 22 league games before pitching up at Anfield.
Liverpool, meanwhile, had recruited Mohamed Salah but were proving thrillingly brittle. This was their first game since selling Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona, the transfer that would ultimately fund their transformation. Virgil van Dijk had arrived a couple of weeks earlier, but missed this clash with City because of injury. Alisson Becker would not arrive until the summer, meaning Liverpool had to rely on Loris Karius, meaning their more pragmatic bet was to try and score with every attack.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain opened the scoring with a rocket from the edge of the box, in what was arguably his finest Liverpool performance: he was never the same player following a serious knee injury sustained later that season. Leroy Sane – a regular tormentor of Liverpool – levelled before the break, after which Liverpool let rip their artillery’s awesome rate of fire: Firmino, Mane, and Salah blowing City away by scoring within eight minutes. Mane found time to hit the post, too.
This was Liverpool’s quintessential riposte to City: the sheer mad, suffocating power of their front three. Late goals by Bernardo and Gundogan gave Liverpool a nervy finish, but ultimately a deserved win.
This fired the starter’s pistol on the rivalry, as Liverpool showed they had the firepower to beat City. They didn’t yet have the defensive stability or the consistency to match them across a season, and proof of that came when they went and lost 1-0 to Swansea in their very next league game.
Afterwards, Kevin de Bruyne was almost grateful, posting on Instagram, “props to Liverpool for a great game.” Any goodwill evaporated weeks later, when Liverpool again rode the Anfield wave to knock City out of the Champions League quarter-finals.
The rivalry also began its sour turn this season, as City’s bus was bombarded on arrival for the Champions League tie.
The Amazon Prime documentary of City’s 100-point season showed Guardiola openly fretting about Liverpool’s firepower and the Anfield atmosphere. His fears were well-founded.
2018/19 – Liverpool 0-0 Manchester City
The experiences of the season prior left a scar for Guardiola, and bred an uncharacteristic level of conservatism on his next return, which led to a curiously drab game. Both sides managed just two shots on target each, with City doing an admirable job in muzzling Liverpool’s front three.
Leroy Sane made his customary impact on this fixture as a second-half sub, winning a late penalty after a very non-customary Van Dijk lunge. Riyad Mahrez, however, skied the penalty, to rob Guardiola of his first win at Anfield.
Both managers declared themsevles pretty happy with a draw, though it proved much better for City than Liverpool. This soporific meeting preceded the side’s greatest game: the 2-1 victory for City at the Etihad in January where – you guessed it – Sane scored the winning goal of arguably the highest-quality Premier League game ever played.
City won the league by a single point, with Liverpool finishing second with a daft total of 97 points. They came painfully close to it all being very different: 1.1 cm, to be exact, which was the distance the ball was from crossing the line at the Etihad. Go 11mm further, and Liverpool would have won the league unbeaten. Maybe they can balance that anguish with the fact Mahrez had let them off the hook earlier in the season.
2019/20 – Liverpool 3-1 Man City
It is to Liverpool’s great credit they weren’t broken by the unrewarded efforts of the season before. Instead, they went on a tear, winning 11 and drawing one of their first 12 games, and this time, City could not even keep pace, having been inhibited by injuries to Sane and Laporte.
They also went to Anfield with Claudio Bravo in goal, and he was quickly beaten by Fabinho’s rocket from the edge of the box. City were aggrieved: they felt they should have had a penalty immediately prior, because of an Alexander-Arnold handball. VAR offered City no reprieve.
Liverpool quickly added a second, in classical form. Alexander-Arnold switched play to Andy Robertson, who charged forward and swung in a deep cross that was headed in by Mo Salah. It was a showcase of the irrepressible full-back play which made Klopp’s first great Liverpool team, and, remarkably, it was also the first time Alexander-Arnold had started a home league game against City.
Sadio Mane killed the game with a third goal just after the break, while Bernardo Silva – a reliably outstanding performer in this fixture – scored City’s consolation.
The result meant Guardiola still had no Anfield win, and this is chiefly remembered for his Lear-on-the-heath style rant at Mike Dean, thrusting his fingers in the air and roaring “TWICE!”
Liverpool weren’t to be denied twice: this result put them eight points clear at the top, and not even a pandemic would deny them a first league title in 30 years.
2020/21 – Liverpool 1-4 Man City
Guardiola finally got his first win at Anfield in the 20/21 season, albeit in an empty stadium. Liverpool were amid an injury crisis concentrated at centre-back, and a bizarrely bad run at Anfield. Having not lost in 68 games at home, this was to be the third of six-straight defeats.
It was an incomprehensible kind of run, and its latest bizarre scene was a disastrous Alisson Becker performance, who repeatedly kicked the ball to City’s many brilliant attackers.
The game began with Ilkay Gundogan doing his best Mahrez impression, smashing a first-half penalty into the Kop. But Phil Foden took over after the break, and Gundogan couldn’t miss when Alisson parried Foden’s shot into his path.
Liverpool did haul themselves level when Salah converted the penalty he won after Ruben Dias’ mistake. But then Guardiola moved Foden to the right wing, and there followed Alisson Blunderland: kicking the ball directly to City players for goals two and three, and then allowing Foden’s shot fly over him at the near-post.
Jurgen Klopp was surprisingly positive about his side’s performance afterwards, and these Alisson errors did appear to be a once-in-a-century event.
This result ended Liverpool’s dull hopes of catching City in the season’s endgame, and City recaptured their league title, with ‘just’ 86 points, their lowest winning total under Guardiola, and the second-lowest total in the league since United won the 2010/11 title with just 80 points.
Alisson was redeemed, of course, scoring the winning goal against West Brom as Liverpool staged a recovery to finish third.
Guardiola ended his maiden Anfield win by expressing hope City would win again in front of a crowd. He’s still waiting.
2021/22 – Liverpool 2-2 Man City
A return to form for this fixture, albeit only in the second-half. The first half was a pretty cagey affair, with Liverpool off-key and confused by Guardiola’s surprise decision to play Jack Grealish as a false nine.
Writing in his diary of the season, Liverpool’s assistant Pep Lijnders said one of Liverpool’s first-half issue was that centre-forward Diogo Jota didn’t chase Rodri well enough, saying his forwards’ ability to rob City players of possession from behind was key to making City feel suffocated.
All hell then broke loose after half-time, with James Milner blessed not to be sent off, deputising at right-back in place of the injured Alexander-Arnold.
Salah set up Sadio Mane in familiar style, to which Foden responded with another Anfield goal. Then came arguably Salah’s greatest-ever Liverpool goal, slaloming and twisting by a succession of City players before slamming the ball beyond Ederson from a tight angle.
Liverpool couldn’t hold on, though, with De Bruyne’s late shot deflecting off Joel Matip and in. It was a deserved point for City, and one that proved vital as they once again pipped Liverpool to the title by a single point.
2022/23 – Liverpool 1-0 Man City
This was the season in which the costs of chasing City became evident for Liverpool. They collapsed, with a punishing injury list exposing a midfield that had completely run out of steam.
But despite all of that, they landed another blow on City. With Alexander-Arnold missing yet again, Ibrahima Konate was injured before the game, meaning Joe Gomez played at centre-back with Milner once again forced into a right-back role.
Foden scored again, but this time the goal was ruled out for a foul on Fabinho by Erling Haaland. Liverpool ordinarily have little problem in attacking City – Klopp has said defending deep against City is trying to win the lottery – but this time they leaned into their outsider status, defending pretty deep and compact in a way they hadn’t for six years.
But again it brought success when, 13 minutes from the end, Alisson larruped the ball up the field to Salah, who shook off Cancelo to stride clear. Guardiola immediately fell to the ground in exaggerated worry, but he knew what was coming. Salah finished beyond Ederson.
Klopp was sent off in the closing minutes, losing his head after Bernardo Silva was not punished for a tackle on Salah that not even rugby referees would tolerate.
Salah has either scored or assisted seven of Liverpool’s 11 Premier League goals against City at Anfield since he joined the club, including all of the last four, going back to 2019. His return to fitness this week is timely.
Of course, this result augured nothing for Liverpool, as they fell apart when they tried to return to their usual style later on in the season. City, meanwhile, recovered to cruise to the treble.
Guardiola still hasn’t won in front of fans at Anfield. Today is his last opportunity to do during Klopp’s tenure.
