Guardiola vs Klopp: The perfect modern rivalry

Manchester City versus Liverpool. Between them, they’ve won the last four league titles with the highest points totals the Premier League has ever seen.

There’s one point separating the teams at the top of the table going into Sunday’s must-watch clash that can be streamed on Showmax Pro on Sunday, 10 April, courtesy of SuperSport. Before the next edition of Pep Guardiola against Jurgen Klopp, here’s all you need to know about the two great managers.

Head-to-head history

Guardiola versus Klopp is turning into one of the great modern managerial rivalries. The rivalry doesn’t seem to be based on any bad blood between the two. It’s just a meeting that’s become accepted as being the best coming up against the best.

When it comes to their head-to-head record, it’s impossible to separate the two. In 22 meetings going back to their clashes in the Bundesliga, the managers have nine wins each (plus four draws). You could argue that Guardiola currently has the upper hand with a current unbeaten run of four games against Liverpool, but that streak started shortly after losing three in a row against Klopp.

Aside from when they’ve directly come up against each other and the trophies that they’ve won, both have built reputations as trendsetters when it comes to football tactics.

Guardiola became renowned for his “tiki taka” style of possession from his early days at Barcelona, which not only led the Catalans to two UEFA Champions League titles in three years, but also played an influential role in Spain’s FIFA World Cup win in 2010.

Klopp announced himself to the world when he rejuvenated Borussia Dortmund by implementing “gegenpress” – a tactic synonymous with German football these days, involving defending from higher up the pitch and aggressive counter-attacks.

If you’re looking for the perfect, modern way to play football, it has to be a balanced mixture between the two styles.

Recent Premier League dominance

While both Guardiola and Klopp have entrenched their position as legends at their respective clubs, they have surely also entrenched themselves as Premier League legends through their sheer dominance as a pair in English football.

If you look at the last five seasons of Premier League football, it’s astounding how far the two clubs are ahead of the rest of the pack. Since the 2017/18 season, City have won 140 games and Liverpool have won 125. No other team has hit 100.

They are the only two teams that have reached 400 goals in that period, and when it comes to goal difference, the gap between second and third is over 100 goals.

While this season looked like it could’ve been a three-horse race with Chelsea too, the dominance of the top two has shown in the league table.

Treble and quadruple chasing

While the battle for the Premier League title will naturally take up a lot of focus in itself, the clubs also find themselves in contention for trophies on multiple fronts and could be on the brink of making some serious history.

Manchester City are currently top of the table and are still in both the UEFA Champions League and the FA Cup. While they won a domestic treble back three years ago, this possible trio would top that as it would include a European honour. It’ll also match the almost mythical achievement by Manchester United back in the 1998/99 season. The “noisy neighbours” would dine out for a while on that one.

Liverpool are still in all of the above competitions that City are in, and, in addition, have won the Carabao Cup this season. This puts them in line for an unprecedented quadruple, which might seem fanciful at this stage, but everyone at the club must at least be thinking about it since there are only two months left of the season.

The stage is set for someone to have an historic season, but only for one of the teams…

Another nail-biting title race

This season, we have eight games to go and Manchester City lead Liverpool by one point.

This is the exact situation that we had three seasons ago in the closest-fought title race in Premier League history.

It ended with City winning the title by one point. Even though Liverpool ended with a nine-game winning run, Guardiola’s team didn’t let up at all and kept winning themselves.

While there’s an obvious similarity between the two title races, the one major difference between now and then is that in the previous one, there wasn’t an effective title-deciding game between the teams this late into the season.

Since both teams have shown brutal relentlessness in title-run-ins, it’s hard to view Sunday’s game as anything but a title-decider. Live stream the action on Showmax Pro, courtesy of SuperSport.

Why Showmax Pro?

Showmax Pro is a streaming service available for Showmax subscribers in Africa that bundles the Showmax entertainment offering with music channels, news and live sports streaming from SuperSport.

Subscribers can live stream the latest seasons of the English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, UEFA Europa and UEFA Conference leagues, as well as FIFA World Cup qualifiers and more.

The platform also offers a wide range of other live sports events including athletics, professional boxing, and the world’s biggest marathons. Visit showmax.com to learn more or to subscribe to Showmax Pro.

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