Standing on the touchline, hands on his head and the smell of sulfur in the air, Pep Guardiola had been here before.
Watching a red whirlwind – a red blizzard – threaten to devour their championship team, a Liverpool team propelled themselves forward on a diet of excitement, adrenaline and purpose.
This has been Liverpool during Guardiola’s years in the Premier League with Manchester City. This has been Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. Soon it will be different and Guardiola – deep in his coach’s heart – will know it better than most.
Whatever happens between now and the end of the season (whoever wins this year’s Premier League), Guardiola will watch Klopp walk away knowing he never managed to solve the puzzle.
Guardiola has more league titles to his name and as such can boast of having dominated the English top flight like no one has done before in the modern era. However, he has never managed to find the solution to the deep and complex challenges presented to him by Klopp’s Liverpool teams.
Jurgen Klopp brings an irreplaceable X factor to Liverpool, and Pep Guardiola never solved the puzzle
Liverpool played like the reflection of their coach, brimming with intensity in the best atmosphere in Europe.
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Here, as the home team 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 that is unmatched anywhere else in Europe. Liverpool played in a way that didn’t really make sense given the rather patchy nature of their lineup. Liverpool presents a challenge as emotional as it is tactical. Liverpool, in short, playing in the mirror of their coach.
And this is the cold truth for Liverpool as they try to move forward without Klopp since the end of this season. Speaking about this last Friday, Klopp was modest. Of course he was. The club is prepared to succeed, he said. And he is right, but only to a certain extent.
This emerging generation of Liverpool, one that features such irresistible talents as Darwin Nunez, Conor Bradley and Harvey Elliott, is taking the long view, but Klopp’s X-factor in this team and this football club will be impossible to replace and by the afternoon. like this one that’s hard to ignore.
The second half was itself a microcosm of what usually happens between these teams. Not always. City have had their good days. But it has often been like this, City being dragged from their form and their comfort zone into the type of football they would otherwise never play. Open, stretched, unpredictable, messy, exciting.
This is not Guardiola’s football. No, Guardiola’s football is measured, controlled, safe and angular. Liverpool play rolling mallet football and that comes from Klopp. Expecting his successor to reproduce it is as unfair as it is unrealistic. Somehow he will have to find another way.
Looking at the teams for this match, the advantage seemed to belong to City. Liverpool were missing four of their first choice and five. Mo Salah did not recover from his injury in time to move from the substitutes’ bench.
So while this never looked like an easy afternoon for City, it hinted at what actually happened during the first 45 minutes. It was a half that ended with City ahead and Liverpool with only one shot on goal, from a free-kick, in the third minute of added time.
But the thing about Liverpool at Anfield is that when the emotional switch is flipped, everything can change. The catalyst here was a short back pass from City’s excellent defender Nathan Ake.
Manchester City’s cerebral, measured style meets fire and thunder in Liverpool’s red blizzard
Guardiola’s team was taken out of its form and its comfort zone
After Alexis Mac Allister’s penalty, Liverpool entered a dream state of greater energy and purpose.
Once that mistake was made and Alexis MacAllister took the penalty that came his way, Liverpool entered that dream state of heightened energy and determination that most sporting teams can only dream of.
From that moment on, Guardiola’s City endured like they never had to before. Good players started making bad decisions and making mistakes. Liverpool began to be offered a space to work that they did not have in the first half.
Liverpool could have won too. The two opportunities that Luis Díaz missed were good. The City players seemed stressed and anxious. On the touchline, Guardiola argued with Kevin de Bruyne while, ten meters away, Klopp stood in his own technical area and smiled at the Liverpool crowd.
It was sports theater at its finest. No one in the main stand dared to sit down. By the time the score went up during eight minutes of added time, Anfield had long since ignored the value of a draw. This is not how Klopp thinks and, consequently, this is not how they think.
That tie was, practically, the correct result. In the end we had another classic of the Klopp-Guardiola genre to treasure. This had everything the two men have given us over the years wrapped up in one crazy, frenetic, perfect game of football.
A 1-1 score may have been a smart money score from the start, but the result wasn’t the best thing about this game. That was to be found in their absolutely unpredictable rhythms, their frenzy, their energy and the repetitive clash of their respective forces.
This was another Klopp-Guardiola classic to treasure, summarizing everything they have given us over the years.
A patched-up Liverpool fed off the atmosphere and Klopp to reach a higher level
Whoever succeeds Klopp would probably be foolish to try to replicate it. So how do you follow it?
‘Bring the Noise’ is the name of a very good biography of Klopp. Never has a book had a better title. This was another riot at Anfield on Sunday. Guardiola’s City will be better for his absence from this moment on, but what about Liverpool? Which will be? How will they feel?
It’s an uncomfortable question. Whoever Klopp’s successor is, it surely cannot be. It would probably be foolish to try. Shaping Liverpool’s future will present a challenge of almost unthinkable proportions.