Manchester United and Liverpool passions run high, for good or ill

1894 was a pivotal year for relations between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester. The Manchester Ship Canal opened on New Year’s Day after merchants became unhappy with the dues they had to pay to export and import their goods through Liverpool. It turned a landlocked city into a port and have stoked the rivalry between the two cities by a not inconsiderable degree. Ships sailing to Manchester no longer had to stop off in Liverpool, which led to job losses and company closures in the city. It’s commonly acknowledged as the point at which the rivalry between the two cities became the rivalry that still exists to this day.

Three months later in April 1894, Liverpool FC – who’d just finished as champions of the Football League Second Division – played Newton Heath, who’d finished bottom of the First Division, in a Test Match for the right to be elected into the top flight for the following season. Liverpool won the match (which was played at Ewood Park in Blackburn) 2-0 thanks to first-half goals scored by Patrick Gordon and Harry Bradshaw, and were promoted. Eight years later, Newton Heath changed their name to Manchester United.

127 years on from that first meeting, the rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United is one of the most celebrated in world football. From the outside, a simplistic view could be that these are two clubs that look very similar. Both represent big working-class cities. They have lengthy histories of success in domestic football, and have won multiple trophies in Europe, too. Both dress predominantly in red and have cross-city rivalries with clubs that wear blue. Both have been scarred by tragedy. This extends beyond the football clubs, too. Both Liverpool and Manchester have a tradition of radicalism and trade union agitation, as well as vast cultural histories. But still the mutual enmity exists.

The rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United sits in its own hinterland. It’s not quite a local derby. The two cities are 35 miles apart, but Everton are closer to Liverpool and Manchester City are closer to Manchester United. But neither is what we might consider to be a ‘national derby’, in the same way that, say, PSG vs Marseille, Real Madrid vs Barcelona, or Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund are. If anything, it most resembles the Derby Della Italia between Juventus and Internazionale, two big and storied clubs from industrial cities in the north of their country. Close but not from the same city, and both with not-insignificant city rivals.

And, of course, the behaviour at these matches has mirrored the worst excesses of whichever era they happen to have been played. As football descended into a tailspin of falling attendances and hooliganism throughout the 1960s and 1970s, so the behaviour became extreme. If there was a tipping point, it was probably the 1977 FA Cup final, when Manchester United beat Liverpool to deny them a treble, after having won the League and the European Cup.

After this, behaviour started to deteriorate. In February 1978, a Manchester United supporter was photographed with a dart lodged in his nose during a match at Anfield. When the two sides met in an FA Cup semi-final replay at Manchester City’s Maine Road in 1985, there were pitched battles between supporters all evening. The following February, tear gas was sprayed at Manchester United supporters when they arrived at Anfield. Several players and supporters required treatment, and Manchester United’s Clayton Blackmore was unable to play in the match.

This hasn’t completely died off, either. A significant disturbance during a Europa League match at Old Trafford in 2016 led to nine people being imprisoned. Supporters also seem to have been unable to break from singing songs celebrating the disasters that have befallen both clubs. For some, Munich, Heysel and Hillsborough continue to represent little more than bait with which to goad opposition supporters. Naturally, this toxicity has also spread online.

Considering their respective statuses, the two clubs have been involved in relatively few cup finals. The only other FA Cup final between the two came in 1996, when a very late Eric Cantona volley won United the double, while they’ve also played two League Cup finals, both won by Liverpool, in 1983 and 2003. Furthermore, relatively few of their title wins have come after a direct race with the other. When Liverpool were sweeping all before them in the 1970s and 1980s, Manchester United were relatively in the doldrums. When their turn came, following the start of the Premier League, it was Liverpool’s turn to be struggling, by their own lofty ambitions. The aforementioned Europa League tie – which was won 3-1 on aggregate by Liverpool – remains the only time they’ve ever played each other in international football.

The fixture has also taken a couple of strange turns. Sir Matt Busby of Manchester United and Bill Shankly of Liverpool, managers who defined their clubs, were close personal friends, but only nine players have ever transferred directly between the clubs, and none have made that journey directly since Phil Chisnall, who signed for Liverpool from Manchester United for £25,000 in 1964.

In August 1971 Manchester United played their first home match of the season – their first following Busby’s final retirement – against Arsenal at Anfield, after Old Trafford was closed for two matches following an incident during which a knife was thrown the season before. And when a Premier League match had to be abandoned because of pitch-invading supporters, it was April 2021 and the match was supposed to be played behind closed doors. Rather than being hooligans, these United supporters were protesting their club’s decision to join the European Super League.

As for this year, Liverpool start as favourites to win, even though the match is being played at Old Trafford, but in recent years Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been able to get big performances out of his teams on big occasions such as this. The match is important for Solskjaer, regardless of the rivalry. Manchester United are in sixth place in the Premier League going into the weekend’s Premier League fixtures, but may well be at least a couple of places lower by the time the match at Old Trafford kicks off. Three points will get them somewhere back towards where they aspire to be in the Premier League table. The same goes for Jurgen Klopp, whose team is a point behind Chelsea at the top of the table.

It’s tight at the top, and dropped points have the potential to be painful at the moment, but while this fixture had earned something of a reputation in recent years for not being one of the most entertaining, the last two fixtures between the two sides featured a combined 11 goals. It has felt in some recent years as though the players have frozen a little on the day of this fixture, and it’s worth remembering that those last two games were both played behind closed doors. Will a first match between these two clubs in front of fans since before the pandemic get to the players? Nobody would deny that there’s a lot of history sitting on the shoulders of these two particular football clubs.