Mad for it: From Blackpool to Barcelona: Football’s Greatest Rivalries

FA Cup Final, 1977

With the League Championship in the bag and a European Cup final to follow, rampant Liverpool were clear favourites – even among some United players. ‘We were not too confident,’ admits striker Stuart Pearson. ‘We knew we’d give Liverpool a game but they were so good you could never say: “We’re going to beat these”.’ United won a thriller, thus denying Liverpool the Treble.

At half-time, I met Peter Hooton, former lead singer of The Farm and lifelong Liverpool fan in front of the Kop’s refreshment kiosks where the Polish catering staff struggle to decipher the Scouse brogue.

‘What are you going to do when we score?’ he asked.

‘When?’

‘When.’

But Liverpool don’t score and United have taken six points from Liverpool this season.

It is commonly agreed that there is rising tension between fans of Liverpool and Manchester United. At Old Trafford last October, both clubs sought to defuse the increasingly fraught atmosphere. During an FA Cup game at Anfield in February 2006, a Liverpool fan had hurled a cup of excrement into the 6,000 United fans on the lower tier of the Anfield Road, hitting one on the head. After the game, Liverpool fans rocked the ambulance carrying injured United striker Alan Smith to hospital – though Smith later received hundreds of cards from well-wishing Liverpool supporters, keen to stress that this was something which made them ashamed.

At Old Trafford, past greats like Bobby Charlton, Ian Callaghan, Denis Law, and Roger Hunt were paraded on the pitch before the game and a penalty competition was held between rival fans. It didn’t work. Not that anyone was too surprised given the levels of animosity. Liverpool fans approaching Manchester that day had been greeted with freshly-painted ‘Hillsborough ’89’ graffiti on a bridge over the M602 in the gritty United heartland of Salford. Closer to the stadium, another sprayed message bore the legend: ‘Welcome to Old Trafford, you murdering Scouse bastards.’

The teams were led out by Gary Neville, punished for the heinous crime of celebrating a goal in front of Liverpool fans the previous season, and Steven Gerrard. Both understand the United v Liverpool rivalry acutely given their lifelong affinity with the clubs they captain. Both would rather stick pins in their eyes than join the enemy. Both were subject to dog’s abuse in the songs which rang round the stadium, which also rehearsed some enduring stereotypes and prejudices about the two clubs and the inhabitants of their cities.

United fans: ‘Gary Neville is a red, he hates Scousers.’

Liverpool: ‘USA! USA!’

United: ‘Michael Shields gets bummed by queers.’ (Referencing Liverpool fan Shields, who was jailed in Bulgaria for an attack on a waiter before Liverpool’s 2005 European Cup victory, a charge which he denies.)

Liverpool: ‘Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, you’ll never walk alone.’

United: ‘Sign on, sign on, with hope in your heart, you’ll never get a job.’

Liverpool: ‘We won it five times in Istanbul, we won it five times.’ (Liverpool fans hold up placards bearing the number five.)

United: ‘Steve Gerrard, Gerrard, he kisses the badge on his chest…then puts in a transfer request, Steve Gerrard, Gerrard.’

Liverpool: ‘All around the fields of Anfield Road, where once we saw the king Kenny play – and could he play. Stevie Heighway on the wing, we have tales and songs to sing, now its glory around the fields of Anfield Road.’

United: ‘Murderers, murderers.’

Liverpool: ‘Shit on the Cockneys, shit on the Cockneys tonight.’ (A surprising reference to United’s perceived out of town support – United are usually loathed by Scousers precisely because they are Mancunian).

United: ‘If you all hate Scousers clap your hands.’ (More people join in this than any other chant.)

Liverpool: ‘We all hate Mancs and Mancs and Mancs.’

United: ‘Park, Park wherever you may be, you eat dog in your own country. But it could be worse, you could be Scouse, eating rat in your council house.’

Liverpool: ‘Once a blue, always a Manc.’ (For Wayne Rooney)

United: ‘Once a blue, always a Red.’ (For Rooney)

Liverpool: ‘You fat bastard.’ (To Rooney – a Scouser who has contributed financially to the ‘Free Michael Shields’ campaign).

United: ‘City of culture, you’re having a laugh.’

Liverpool: ‘Oh Manchester, is full of shit…’

United: ‘Does the social know you’re here?’

Like all the greatest rivalries, it’s the common ground that divides the most. Manchester United and Liverpool both hail from largely working-class, immigrant cities with huge Irish populations. Just thirty-five miles apart in England’s North West, both were economic powerhouses that enjoyed a friend/foe relationship by the 19th century. Liverpool considered itself the greatest port in the world, gateway to North America for millions, and a key trading post for the Empire. Manchester was ‘Cottonopolis’, the first city of the industrial revolution – hence the phrase ‘Manchester made and Liverpool trade’.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

Liverpool 2 United 1

Milk Cup Final, 1983

An Alan Kennedy equaliser ten minutes from time cancelled out Norman Whiteside’s twelfth minute opener and extra-time followed. With 100 minutes played, Ronnie Whelan curled a shot around the United defence to score the winner and seal Liverpool’s third consecutive League Cup.

Civic co-operation in anticipation of greater wealth ensured that the world’s first passenger railway was opened between the cities in 1830, but by late 1878, the year Manchester United were formed as Newton Heath, a worldwide trade depression left Manchester grappling with economic stagnation and labour migration. Liverpool was blamed for charging excessively high rates for importing the raw cotton spun in Lancastrian mills and Manchester’s solution was to give the city direct access to the sea to export its manufactured goods, thus cutting out the middle man of Liverpool.

A canal big enough to carry ships was proposed, which infuriated Liverpudlians. They tried to ridicule the plans out of existence and Liverpool-based backlash against the ship canal ranged from music hall songs and pantomime references to reasoned economic argument. None of it prevented the Manchester Ship Canal being built and the city became Britain’s third busiest port, despite being forty miles inland. This is why the United crest has a ship on it. But this was only a temporary respite for Manchester.

With the end of the British colonies and the introduction of container ships, Liverpool’s port became less viable, while the disintegration of the textile industry hit Manchester and both cities suffered generations of economic decline and depopulation. Extreme deindustrialisation and suburbanisation was coupled with growing unemployment and poverty among the proletariat. The nadir was marked in 1981 by violent riots in Manchester’s Moss Side and Liverpool’s Toxteth districts.

Yet when it came to football and music, both cities punched well above their respective demographic weights, making them special to millions around the globe, but also reinforcing and extending the rivalry.

On the pitch, enmities were not clear cut. Manchester City were the bigger Mancunian club until World War Two, while Everton were often the pre-eminent Merseyside force. Indeed, the rivalry between United and Liverpool was respectful until the 1960s with some Manchester United players even going to watch Liverpool when United didn’t have a game.

‘We’d stand on the Kop,’ recalls Pat Crerand, a former hard-tackling United midfielder turned pundit. ‘The Scousers would have a word with us, but it was good humoured.’ Bill Shankly used to call Crerand at home every Sunday morning for a friendly football chat. Shankly and the United manager Matt Busby, who both hailed from Lanarkshire mining stock in Scotland, were also close and Busby had played for Liverpool.

‘I always had great respect for Liverpool Football Club and Bill Shankly,’ adds Crerand (though that didn’t stop him, in his early-’70s role as United’s assistant manager, from snaring Lou Macari in the Anfield main stand just as he was about to sign for Liverpool). ‘When I go to Anfield now, I speak to long-standing Liverpool fans who can’t put up with what the rivalry has become, with the hooliganism and the nastiness between the fans. Liverpool and Manchester are both working-class cities that have produced two of the greatest football clubs in the world. People should be proud of that, but they’re not.’

United had the hegemony in the 1960s – twice league champions and the first English team to win the European Cup. Not since that decade has a player left United for Liverpool or vice-versa (Phil Chisnall was the last, in April 1964). Liverpool were far superior to United in the 1970s and ’80s, winning four European Cups and eleven league titles as United endured twenty-six title-free years, but United were usually the better supported club and matched Liverpool in head-to-head encounters. And even as Liverpool had the success, United enjoyed a reputation and allure which rankled Liverpool supporters who thought it undeserved.

By the 1980s, the rivalry had become vicious, with United’s Scouse manager Ron Atkinson describing a trip to Anfield as like going into Vietnam. Big Ron’s experience fighting the Viet Cong has not been fully substantiated, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating – he had just been tear gassed.

‘We got off the coach and all of a sudden something hit us and everyone’s eyes went,’ Atkinson recalls. ‘I thought it was fumes off new paint or something, but it was tear gas. In our dressing room before the game there were a lot of fans, Liverpool fans too, kids, all sorts, eyes streaming. Clayton Blackmore was so bad he wasn’t able to play. I was in an awful state. I’d run in and there’d been two blokes standing in front of the dressing room door and I couldn’t see who they were. I was blinded and I’d pushed one of them up against the wall. Afterwards, [assistant manager] Mick Brown said, “What you done to Johnny Sivebaek?” I said, “What are you on about?” It turned out that Sivebaek, who we’d signed the week before, didn’t speak much English and in his first game, against the European champions, he was gassed as he got off the coach and then got hurled against the wall by his new team manager. No wonder he didn’t perform that day!’

Liverpool fans frequently sang songs about the 1958 Munich air crash, but stopped for a time after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. United fans barely sang about Hillsborough until a minority changed that in recent years. Yet for every United fan who stoops so low, you’ll find one who respects the continued boycott of The Sun on Merseyside and the continuing campaign for justice for the ninety-six who perished.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

Liverpool 3 United 3

League, April 1988

First v Second, but Liverpool’s substantial lead made them clear title favourites. Reduced to ten men and trailing 3–1 with thirty minutes left, United were on the ropes until goals from Bryan Robson and Gordon Stra-chan levelled the scores. The latter celebrated by smoking an imaginary cigar in front of an outraged Kop.

For United fans, no matter how dangerous the trip to Anfield became, it remained one of the most eagerly-awaited of the season because it contained all the edge, passion, and vitriol that you’d expect from a long-standing cultural and social enmity between two teams whose cultural influence extends far beyond their city boundaries.