Jürgen Klopp’s call for Anfield intensity against City has rich heritage
Both the German and Pep Guardiola are likely to be adventurous in a Champions League quarter-final that will revive Liverpool memories of great European battles of the past
Sat 31 Mar 2018 20.00 BST
T imes have certainly changed since the September night in 1978 when Nottingham Forest’s team coach rolled up late to a European Cup tie at Liverpool with Bill Shankly sat up front alongside Brian Clough. The players who usurped
Liverpool as European champions that season never asked Clough why he invited the Anfield icon on board, though suspected it was part of their manager’s attempts to defuse the tension and animosity that surrounded the visit to Bob Paisley’s holders. All-English European ties have tended to carry a similar edge ever since. Anfield on Wednesday will be no exception.
Within minutes of arguably the Premier League’s two most exhilarating teams being drawn together in the Champions League quarter-finals, a call went out on social media for Liverpool fans to give Manchester City the kind of pyrotechnic, frenzied “welcome” that accompanied the team’s pursuit of the 2014 title and
2016 Europa League . City, mindful of previous hostile receptions for their players and supporters, raised safety concerns with Liverpool and Merseyside police, who have warned of prosecution for anyone found guilty of “dangerous and reckless” behaviour. The warning will not dilute the atmosphere inside the stadium, however, and caution is unlikely to enter the philosophy of Jürgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola as they renew a rivalry that can only intensify on the Champions League stage.
There exists a healthy respect between the former managers of Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich. Klopp, talking before Liverpool’s last-16 rout in Porto, described City as “probably the strongest team in Europe at the minute” and their manager as the perfect fit for a club that crave success with fluent, offensive football. Guardiola, despite the disappointment of seeing City’s unbeaten Premier League campaign ending at Anfield in January, was genuine in his praise of the pressing game from Liverpool that ensured “we lost a little bit of our control”. Anfield can do that to opponents, especially in Europe, as Clough recognised 40 years ago.
“He wanted us to walk in front of the Kop,” recalls Garry Birtles of Forest’s pre-match routine for the European Cup first round, second leg at Anfield. The team coach, Shankly up top, had arrived only half an hour before kick-off. “Anfield was the most hostile place I’d ever been but Clough insisted on it. He sent us out there to make it clear we respected them but it was effectively us saying: ‘You can sing You’ll Never Walk Alone until you are hoarse but it won’t make any difference.’
“Liverpool’s fans despised us. The sight of us strolling around laughing and joking riled them. They were booing us, throwing oranges and everything they could get their hands on. A tennis ball came on the pitch. John Robertson flicked it up, volleyed it and stuck it in the top corner of the net. All of a sudden the mood changed and the Kop started to applaud.”
A goalless second leg sent England’s champions through at the expense of the then European champions Liverpool, following a 2-0 first leg win at the City Ground. Birtles opened the scoring in the home tie, his first Forest goal, and created the second in the 87th minute for Colin Barrett.
It is the ferocity on the pitch that Birtles remembers most. The former striker, who admits to having “two or three pints” the night before the first leg, says: “At 1-0, Phil Thompson ran past me and said: ‘One won’t be enough.’ He almost spat out the words.” After Barrett’s volley Birtles retorted: “One not enough, Phil? Will two do us then?’ There was no way I should have been doing that to a seasoned England international. His face was like thunder. I must have been mad, especially with [Graeme] Souness in their team.”
The song that starts “We hate Nottingham Forest” echoes from the Kop to this day. Similarly, contempt between Liverpool and Chelsea increased when they opposed each other 10 times in the Champions League between April 2005 and 2009. Relations between Liverpool and City are civil by comparison to the rivalry that shattered the cordiality between Rafael Benítez and José Mourinho, although the quarter-final does have parallels with the volatile opening act of their European saga. Not tactically, of course.
As with the Champions League semi-final of 2005, Liverpool’s opponents are cruising towards a manager’s first Premier League title. It was City who denied Klopp a first and early piece of silverware at Liverpool in
the 2016 League Cup final , just as Chelsea did to Benítez in the same competition in 2005.
The German coach believes there would be a different view of his reign, or more specifically the nagging doubt about his team, had they prevailed on penalties at Wembley or against Sevilla in that year’s Europa League final. “In this moment it’s always: ‘Liverpool are good but …’ We know that,” he said recently. “If we had won the two finals we played in my first season here everything would have settled on another level. It would have helped massively.”
A Champions League triumph would be ample compensation, as Benítez can testify. Beating the English champions-elect along the way would also strengthen Klopp’s argument that City can be eventually reeled in over a domestic campaign as well as a cup tie. For Guardiola, it is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate otherwise.
Reflecting on that first semi-final victory over Mourinho’s side in an autobiography, Steven Gerrard said a desire for revenge flowed through a Liverpool team who “had so much unfinished business with Chelsea”. He also attributed the unforgettable, spine-tingling atmosphere of the second leg at Anfield not only to his club’s desperate longing for a first European Cup final in 20 years but to the changing landscape of English football. “Kopites wanted us to remind Roman Abramovich that money isn’t everything,” Gerrard said. “They saw the match as a collision of new money and history, Billionaire’s Club v Community Club.”
Liverpool are hardly paupers, with the world’s most expensive defender at the heart of Klopp’s back-line, the £75m Virgil van Dijk; but having been frustrated in their pursuit of a 19th league title by Abramovich’s wealth and then that of Sheikh Mansour, among other factors, a desire to bridge the financial gap will again be at work on Wednesday. Not that any extra motivation is required.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/mar/31/jurgen-klopp-liverpool-manchester-city-champions-league-anfield