![]() “Sterling behaved like a bit of a child.” “It was a pretty full-on thing and food went everywhere,” a source told The Athletic at the time. It lasted only 10 to 15 seconds - Sterling snapping as Gomez went to shake his hand, asking him, “So you think you’re the big man?”, then trying to grip Gomez in a headlock. The days of simmering club tensions at England camps are largely a thing of the past thanks to a cultural shift during the Gareth Southgate era, but the St George’s Park canteen provided the venue for the incident between Raheem Sterling and Joe Gomez in November 2019. Generally though, it is rare for players from the two clubs to socialise with each other outside of football, particularly the British ones. The pair were part of a group of Brazilians including Fernandinho, Roberto Firmino, Fabinho and Fred who chatted away on Zoom calls through the Covid-19 pandemic and invited each other around for barbecues once lockdown restrictions were lifted. Diogo Jota said earlier this year that if he could choose one of his fellow countrymen to join Liverpool, it would be Bernardo Silva.Īnd when Alisson arrived at Anfield in 2018, fellow goalkeeper Ederson took him out for lunch to welcome him to the north west of England despite their competition to be Brazil’s No 1. Then there is each squad’s contingent of Portuguese speakers. Two relatively new additions, Dominik Szoboszlai and Erling Haaland, have been close since their time together at Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg, while Julian Alvarez and Alexis Mac Allister share a bond through winning the World Cup together with Argentina last December. The two are close friends, in fact, as are their wives, Michele Lacroix and Rike Nooitgedagt. In contrast to Premier League duopolies of old, particularly the battles between Manchester United and Arsenal in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the City-Liverpool era has been notable for how well some of the players get along.Īfter a closely-fought draw at the Etihad on the run-in of the 2021-22 season, City’s Kevin De Bruyne revealed he and Virgil van Dijk of Liverpool know each other well from the morning school run as they live near each other. ![]() ![]() One place where the intensity of this rivalry has not always been apparent is on the pitch. ![]() This is how the rivalry is felt across different areas of the two clubs. Though it might be crude to draw an explicit link, those concerns have to be viewed in the context of a rivalry that has intensified over more than a decade, to the point where it has defined the good and the bad of English football in the past few years. This meeting at the Etihad Stadium was moved from initially being in the 5:30pm Saturday evening slot to an early kick-off after consultation with the local safety advisory group, due to concerns over ugly crowd disturbances that have marred recent games between the two clubs. Local stakeholders such as Greater Manchester Police, for example. Yet others might hear or read Klopp’s comments, look back on the recent history of this rivalry between Manchester City and Liverpool and conclude that everyone has felt quite a lot of football already, thank you very much. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |