The image of a blood-stained baby blue and white scarf is one of the more shocking from the fallout of Manchester City and Liverpool games of the past six years.
It belonged to a 15-year-old girl who her father said had been left “scarred for life” after a plastic cup full of coins was hurled from the away end at the Etihad Stadium, when City hosted Liverpool for a Carabao Cup tie in 2022, and cut open a one-inch gash in her face.
Greater Manchester Police vowed to catch the person responsible and the teenager’s father called for help in outing them. People will know who threw it, but such is the omertà of football tribalism police sources told i this week that GMP had to close their investigation after being unable to identify the perpetrator.
It is one of many striking memories of their meetings.
There were the images of the Manchester City bus being pelted with bottles, bricks and flares when it arrived at Anfield for a Champions League quarter-final in April 2018. One of the most ferocious photographs of Jurgen Klopp – of which there are many – growling at fourth official Gary Beswick before he was sent off, is from a Premier League game against City in October 2022.
There has been graffiti scrawled by City fans in Anfield toilets accusing them of being “murdering scum” captured on smartphones, tragedy chanting, Klopp stirring up referee conspiracy theories, Pep Guardiola’s famous “this is Anfield” comment after seeing a goal disallowed following a narrow defeat. City fans retaliating with an attack on Liverpool’s bus leaving Manchester last year. City reporting to Liverpool that staff were spat at in the Anfield dugout – Liverpool investigating but finding no evidence.
As bitter football feuds go, rarely has there been one with so many flashpoints in such a short space of time.
Is this evidence of a fierce new rivalry taking root in the modern era that will live long into the decades ahead? Or could it, in fact, be a rivalry manufactured on the Manchester City side, in the belief that being at loggerheads with another big club is an essential facet of a global mega club, a notion suggested to i this week?
After the 2018 bus attack, the Manchester Evening News ran a survey which found that Liverpool were the most-picked rival by City fans – ahead of Manchester United. Yet the Liverpool Echo later described it as “a one-way street” and asked in another article exploring the emergence of this fierce animosity: “Are Liverpudlians really bothered about them?”
Their point is that the Manchester United rivalry, while not based on geography, has survived the decades due to the two clubs’ mutual respect for building world-leading clubs through historical success. When a temporary Liverpool-Chelsea rivalry flared in the 2ooos, back then Liverpool fans compared Chelsea’s success to winning the lottery. And the same is, largely, felt about City now.
In these mini rivalries, for a period of time two sets of fans will hate one another while their respective clubs compete for trophies and the managers tear strips out of one another on the touchline and in press conferences, but take both of those out of the equation and the animosity fades.
“It’s a weird one because it almost seems forced, and engineered,” Matt Ladson, who has been going to Liverpool games for over 30 years and is editor at This Is Anfield, tells i. “Maybe that’s just City as a club, it’s something that’s been manufactured.
“It’s not a rivalry in the sense of Everton or Manchester United. When Everton and Manchester United are crap, they’re still a rival, we still hate playing against them, they’ll still cause us problems and vice versa. When we weren’t good and United were winning the league, they would’ve hated playing against us.
“If Man City were to go back to being a mid-table club, there wouldn’t be a rivalry anymore. They’d just become irrelevant. They’d just be another team in the Premier League.
“Much like Liverpool see Aston Villa, who previously had massive games against Liverpool but now they’re not, because they’re not competing for trophies.
“It’s somewhat similar to the Chelsea rivalry and how that emerged in the early, mid 2000s, Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho. We were always playing them in Champions League semi-finals and FA Cup finals, games where the title might be an outside chance for Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers.
“It’s a similar kind of thing. I wouldn’t say City are a rival because if they dissipate a little bit then it’s not there anymore and we’d forget about them.”
Tensions will be heightened again on Sunday when City visit Anfield clinging desperately to the title race: the triumphant, all-conquering empire starting to crack and crumble around its emperor, preparing to do battle with an opponent they thought had fallen away but has found a resurgence under Arne Slot.
Liverpool have a chance to move 11 points clear at the top of the table, a gap that would take yet another feat of magnificence from Guardiola to chase down, even with two-thirds of the season still to play.
He was so vexed by his team’s current malaise (five defeats and a draw representing his longest winless run) that he scratched his face so badly it looked like he’d gone 12 rounds with a cat after throwing away a three-goal lead in midweek against Feyenoord.
Already, one viral post on X, seen by more than half a million people has directed Liverpool fans to greet City’s coach as it arrives at the stadium on Sunday via Anfield Road in a nod to 2018. “Make the streets red,” the flyer says. “Make it as horrible as we can for City.”
Certainly, on the online battlefields, the apex of football tribalism, the mutual resentment runs deep.
One popular Manchester City influencer declined an interview, citing the severe abuse they have received from both sets of supporters each time they have discussed the rivalry.
And while the Liverpool fans i spoke to don’t necessarily see it as something lasting long into the future, the present hostility remains fierce, for several reasons.
There is a feeling that had some major refereeing decisions not gone City’s way, Liverpool could have made more of a dent in City’s trophy tally.
“Jurgen alluded to that several times,” Ladson says.
Ladson recalls going unbeaten at home and amassing 97 points – the fourth highest points total in English football history – in the 2018-19 season and finishing second by one point. In a game between the two, which City won 2-1, John Stones made a goal-line clearance and Hawkeye revealed the ball was 11mm from crossing the line.
He refers to the 2021-22 season, when City again won the title by one point, and Rodri’s handball against Everton that wasn’t given as a penalty. Everton complained and received an apology from Mike Riley, the head of referees at the time. City won the game 1-0.
“All these absolute near misses, that does make you think, we all talk about fine margins in sport, but sometimes just the slightest indecision by a referee can lead to not winning a league title and that’s frustrating,” Ladson says.
“Liverpool have had those near misses and with a couple of decisions going their way, or whatever it may be, Liverpool could easily have three of City’s league titles.”
The superficial rivalry has emerged, Ladson believes, as a result of each game against City carrying such significance creating a series of successive “big matches”. Not only the knockout games but the tightness of the title races has made the two league meetings immensely significant.
And lingering in the background, nagging away behind all of it, has been investigations into City breaching regulations and the on-going hearing into the 115 charges, which could have huge implications on the perception of how they built their success.
If the book is thrown at City – who deny all wrongdoing – when the outcome is published next year, Liverpool will be the side who feel they were denied the most.
“I’m sure if you asked an athlete competing against Lance Armstrong at the time, he still competes to his best but it’s only afterwards the true frustrations [come out],” Ladson says.
“If – and I emphasis if – the result goes a certain way, nobody wants to win a title from six, seven, eight years ago. It doesn’t change anything.
“I don’t think we’re getting Victor Moses and Kolo Toure back together and parading them through the streets of Liverpool for a title 10 years ago! It’s not going to really change anything much.
“You compete in that moment. The focus just has to be on now, trying to win the trophies we missed out on in the past.”
Meanwhile, a simmering frustration remains that in the one season they did pip City to it the country was in lockdown during the pandemic and the club, its city and fans were unable to celebrate fully.
“Until we do get that monkey off the back again and win the league it’s always going to be there, we’ve not been able to do it the way we wanted.
“It feels now a little bit like when Liverpool won the league, City had fallen off and Liverpool were relentless, wining 23 out of 24 games. We’ll see.”
Standing in their way, yet again, is Manchester City.
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