Pep Guardiola stood on the touchline, his hands on his head and the smell of sulfur in the air. Pep Guardiola had been here before.
Watching a swirl of red – a blizzard of red – threaten to engulf his team of champions, a Liverpool team forged ahead on a diet of emotion, adrenaline and purpose.
This was Liverpool during Guardiola’s years in the Premier League with Manchester City. This was Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. Soon things will be different and Guardiola – deep in his coach’s heart – will know that better than most.
Whatever happens between now and the end of the season – whoever wins the Premier League this year – Guardiola will see Klopp walk away knowing he never quite managed to solve the puzzle.
Guardiola has more league titles to his name and as such can lay claim to dominating the English top flight in a way that no one has before in the modern era. Yet he never managed to find the solution to the deep and complex challenges Klopp’s Liverpool teams presented him with.
Jurgen Klopp brings an irreplaceable X-factor to Liverpool – and Pep Guardiola never solved the puzzle
Liverpool played like a mirror image of their manager, packed with intensity in the best atmosphere in Europe
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Here, as the home side recovered from a first half in which they had improved, Guardiola simply watched a similar story unfold. As the saying goes, he had seen this movie before.
Liverpool played with an intensity that was impossible to match in an atmosphere unlike anywhere else in Europe. Liverpool played in a way that didn’t really make sense given the rather patchy nature of their formation. Liverpool presented a challenge that was as emotional as it was tactical. In short, Liverpool plays the mirror image of their manager.
And this is the cold truth for Liverpool as they look to move forward without Klopp from the end of the season. Speaking about this last Friday, Klopp was modest. Of course he was. The club is set up to succeed, he said. And he’s right, but only to a point.
This emerging Liverpool generation – a generation with irresistible talents such as Darwin Nunez, Conor Bradley and Harvey Elliott – has a long-term vision, but the X-factor Klopp is impossible to replace for this team and this football club and on afternoons like these, which are difficult to is to ignore.
The second half was itself a microcosm of what often happened between these teams. Not always. City have had their good days. But often it has been like this: City have been taken out of their form and comfort zone and into a football match they would otherwise never play. Open, tense, unpredictable, messy, exciting.
This is not Guardiola’s football. No, Guardiola football is measured, controlled, safe and angular. Liverpool plays rolling maul football and that comes from Klopp. It is as unfair as it is unrealistic to expect his successor to copy this. Somehow he’ll have to find another way.
Looking at the teams for this match the advantage seemed to be City’s. Liverpool were missing four of their first choice and five. Mo Salah had not recovered from an injury in time to progress beyond the substitutes’ bench.
While this never looked like an easy afternoon for City, it did hint at what indeed happened during the opening 45 minutes. It was a half that ended with City in the lead and Liverpool having managed just one shot on target from a free-kick in the third minute of extra time.
But the thing about Liverpool at Anfield is that when the emotional switch is flipped, everything can change. The catalyst for this was a short back pass from City’s otherwise excellent defender Nathan Aké.
The cerebral, measured style of Manchester City meets fire and thunder in the red blizzard of Liverpool
Guardiola’s team were taken out of shape and forced out of their comfort zone
After Alexis Mac Allister’s penalty, Liverpool entered a dreamlike state of higher energy and purpose
Once that mistake was made and Alexis MacAllister atoned for the punishment he was dealt, Liverpool entered that dreamy state of higher energy and purpose that most sports teams can only dream of.
From then on, Guardiola’s City persevered in a way they never really have to. Good players started making bad decisions and mistakes. Liverpool started to have space to work that wasn’t there in the first half.
Liverpool really could have won. The two chances rejected by Luis Diaz were good ones. City’s players looked stressed and anxious. On the touchline, Guardiola argued with Kevin de Bruyne while Klopp stood ten yards away in his own technical area and grinned at the Liverpool crowd.
It was sports theater at its best. No one in the main stand could bring themselves to sit down. When the board went up eight minutes into extra time, Anfield had long ignored the value of the draw. This is not how Klopp thinks and, as a result, not how they think either.
That draw was just about the right result. At the end we had another Klopp-Guardiola classic to cherish. This one had everything the two men have given us over the years, packed into one crazy, frenetic, perfect football match.
A 1-1 result may have been a smart money result at first, but the result was not the beauty of this match. This could be found in his completely unpredictable rhythms, his frenzy, his energy and the repeated clash of his respective forces.
This was another Klopp-Guardiola classic to cherish, encapsulating everything they have given us over the years
A patched-up Liverpool team fed off the atmosphere and Klopp to reach the next level
Whoever succeeds Klopp would probably be foolish to try to copy him. So, how do you follow him?
‘Bring the Noise’ is the name of a very good biography of Klopp. Never has a book had a better title. This was another racket at Anfield on Sunday. Guardiola’s City will be better off for his absence from this point, but what about Liverpool? What will they be? How will they feel?
It’s an uncomfortable question. Whatever Klopp’s successor is, this certainly cannot be him. It would probably be foolish to try. Shaping Liverpool’s future will be a challenge of almost unthinkable proportions.
