Even before the endlessly mind-numbing debate over the role of Wayne Rooney in England’s next World Cup debacle, the hype storm had been swirling.
Liverpool vs. Manchester United is always going to buffet the fan bases but this season’s first meeting has riveted the soccer world beyond the usual tribalistic enmity.
There are two compelling reasons for this: Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho.
Liverpool vs. 
Manchester United With all due respect to Pep Guardiola, The World’s Greatest Manager As Long As He Had Lionel Messi, Klopp and Mourinho are the Premier League’s most outsized, charismatic and gloriously unhinged personalities and on Monday they face off in the latest installment of a blood feud that began in 1894 (slightly before Tottenham last finished ahead of Arsenal in the league).
No wonder both men have been careful not to add hot air to the howling winds already hammering Anfield ahead of the match.
On the face of it, Liverpool are the clear favorites despite being only three points ahead of United in the table. Klopp’s Kops have gotten off to a furious start and have won four games in a row, often blowing away opponents with their breathless tempo and unremitting intensity.
Buoyed by the pace and panache of Philippe Coutinho, Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana, they are doing something that is antithetical to Mourinho’s very soul: scoring goals for fun. 18 in seven league games overall, including nine in two at home.
This has the “Football Einsteins,” as Mourinho has lovingly referred to the English media, falling over themselves to profess their adoration for Kloppball and the bespectacled mastermind with the wild-eyed look and immaculate hair weave behind it. If Mourinho represents the stodgy, conventional, anti-entertainment way of playing, then Klopp is his antithesis, whose lung-busting, uber-pressing style sets pulses racing.
It has taken a full year of Klopp mania — Monday will mark the anniversary of his first game in charge of Liverpool — to imprint his tactical and technical philosophy on his team and what better way to show off that impressive evolution than to thump their most bitter rivals.
But the Anfield faithful are painfully aware that no one knows how to spoil a party quite like Mourinho. He might well be the Ted Cruz of the Premier League.
There is probably no darker day in Liverpool’s recent history than Apr. 26, 2014, when the peripatetic Portuguese brought his stuttering Chelsea side to Anfield and forced Steven Gerrard into “The Slip” that famously derailed the Reds’ most serious title challenge in an ice age.
As the then-Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers, on the verge of canonization at the time, pointed out, Chelsea parked “two buses” on the Anfield pitch in a cynical and calculated attempt to strangle the game.
Then there was the Blues’ egregious time-wasting, an approach best illustrated when the ball ended up in Mourinho’s arms in the sixth minute as he stood in his technical area. Instead of simply handing it to a Liverpool player for a throw-in, he waited until Steven Gerrard and Jon Flanagan both tried to wrest it from his grasp and then executed a behind-the-back pass to make them scamper.
But the image seared into every crestfallen Liverpool fan’s brain that day is one that took place after the final whistle. There was Mourinho, his face transformed into a mask of maniacal glee, racing down the touchline and pounding his chest in front of the traveling supporters, as a funereal silence engulfed the rest of the stadium.
So no matter how much he has tried in the run-up to Monday’s game to present himself as the consummate diplomat — except for that pesky possible FA charge over his pre-game remarks on the officiating — even proclaiming how much he is looking forward to “testing himself against a big opponent,” Mourinho knows he’ll still be viewed as the evil autocrat leading Liverpool’s most hated foe onto the hallowed ground of Anfield.
And, of course, Jose will relish the role, as well as the fact that, a mere seven league games into his Old Trafford reign, United has been written off as an absurdly expensive collection of talent in search of an identity that still has three fewer points at this stage of the season than last year’s Louis van Gaal shambles.
Mourinho’s boldest tactical move so far has been to strip his starting line-up of its talismanic captain and scapegoat-in-chief Rooney, whose laborious play for club and country has reduced him to a series of cameos from the bench in recent weeks.
Klopp, in keeping with his irrationally exuberant attitude, made a point of praising Rooney last week as a “world-class player.” It is tempting to imagine how the German would have handled the “Wazzexit” situation had he been in a position to do so, which, according to Sir Alex Ferguson’s most recent book on management, he could have been.
Apparently, when Fergie was thinking of stepping down from his throne after almost 27 years of ruthless hegemony, he approached Klopp about the possibility of managing United, a “big honor” that Klopp spurned to remain at Borussia Dortmund. Oh, how the slope of United’s plummet might have been transformed if only the German had said “Yes, Sir Alex.” Instead, the Old Trafford job went to David Moyes and, well, the rest is mathematically painful.
But I digress. Even without the drive and dynamism that Rooney once provided, United still has plenty of attacking firepower and sharp-elbowed physicality to trouble Liverpool. Despite Klopp’s defensive overhaul, Liverpool remain vulnerable to speed on the flanks, which United possess in abundance with Marcus Rashford and Antony Martial.
They also have a nasty habit of conceding from corners and set pieces and neither of Liverpool’s goalkeepers, the former incumbent Simon Mignolet or 23-year-old German Loris Karius, who Klopp has recently preferred, inspires confidence when it comes to catching or punching aerial balls and United, with the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Marouane Fellaini and Paul Pogba, have the length and power to punish them. Given that Liverpool seemingly last kept a clean sheet during the Kenny Dalglish era, Mourinho’s men are going to score.
“We know about United’s physical strength and we cannot do anything to change it,” said Klopp. “All we can do is try to avoid situations where they can use it… If you have one second where you don’t concentrate, you can lose the game in that second. ”
Coming early in the season, the game will not make or break either manager’s campaign but each could do with a positive statement of intent. For Mourinho, this is the start of a hellish six-day day stretch that sees United play at Liverpool, then host Fenerbahce in the Europa League before their manager makes his first return to Chelsea since his spectacular implosion last season.
Fittingly, it was Klopp’s inaugural league win as a Liverpool manager last October, a 3-1 victory at Stamford Bridge, that presaged Mourinho’s downfall with the traveling Kop army serenading him: “You’re not special anymore.” He was Abramovich-ed two months later.
Despite that stint in the unemployment line for the highly paid, Mourinho doesn’t bear a grudge toward Klopp, as he does to just about every other manager in the league. “For Jurgen, I am not a close friend because football doesn’t allow that, but he is a guy I like a lot,” Mourinho has said of his opposite number.
Well, up to a point. After that loss Stamford Bridge, Mourinho moaned about Klopp’s hyperactive touchline antics and his constant ranting at the fourth official. Like most things, the Liverpool manager took the criticism in his ebullient stride.
“I have to accept that not everyone is 100 percent happy with my performances on the sidelines,” he said. “But actually now at Anfield with the new stand, there is much more space for all of us.”
It must drive Mourinho batty how beloved and successful Klopp has become in his short time at Liverpool, culminating in him being named Manager of the Month for September. Asked for his opinion on that, Mourinho told the “Football Einsteins” that he had “nothing to say.”
That could bode ill for Liverpool because it means, for the first time since Rooney was actually dangerous as a soccer player, Mourinho may do his talking on the pitch.
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