FA CUP QUARTER-FINAL
When Manchester United meet Liverpool in the FA Cup, sparks will fly, says Simon Barnes
There is a devil that dwells in the Football Association’s velvet bag. It’s in there, up to no good, imparting some weird energy to the numbered balls as they clatter into the plastic bowl, ready to be retrieved by whichever footballing notable has landed the job of making the draw for the next round of the FA Cup.
How did it make mischief for the quarterfinals? By putting precisely the wrong two clubs together. On a weekend when Wolves host Coventry City, Newcastle United visit Manchester City and Chelsea face Leicester, Liverpool must make the short journey – 36 miles by the Manchester Ship Canal – to play Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday.
United and Liverpool would both have preferred a home draw against one of the non-Premier League sides left in the competition. But instead, the two most successful clubs in the history of English football, the clubs with the fiercest rivalry of any two clubs in the land, must go head to head all over again.
Between them they’ve won the league 39 times; all the clubs in London put together have only won it 21 times. The cities of Manchester and Liverpool are historic and economic rivals, and when the rivalry is expressed in football the atmosphere tends to get poisonous.
Liverpool see themselves as rough diamonds – brilliant, mercurial, high-spirited, working-class and proud – and they see Manchester United as glamour-seekers who are over-loved by the media and inclined to get above themselves. United, however, consider themselves as the special club: a cut above everybody else.
English football’s Liverpool period lasted from 1972 to 1990, when they won 11 titles. But it was followed by the Manchester United period, which lasted until the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013 and saw them win 13 titles. Since then, Liverpool have been dominant, as emphasised by their remarkable 7–0 victory in the league a year ago.
Both clubs are now in a state of transition, though Liverpool are certainly wearing it better. Jürgen Klopp is leaving at the end of the season, and his team have reached the last eight of the FA Cup in glorious style. With 13 first-teamers injured for the fifth round, Klopp gave the kids a proper go and was rewarded by a 3–0 victory over Southampton. Two goals came from Jayden Danns and one from Lewis Koumas – both of whom are just 18 years old.
That was a classic Klopp result. His inspirational powers are so blindingly obvious we sometimes overlook his tactical nous, and his players would love to end his era with at least one more tr
