Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Just as Real Madrid prepare to travel to Barcelona for a top two clash in La Liga on Sunday, Liverpool and Manchester United will play out the 192nd instalment of English football’s biggest fixture for the honour of claiming fourth place in the Premier League.
Just seven years ago, Liverpool were a John-Arne Riise own goal away from meeting United in the Champions League final in Moscow, but now it is about finishing fourth.
Not first, second or third, but fourth.
When Bill Shankly claimed that ‘first is first, second is nowhere,’ during his reign as Liverpool manager, the Scot could never have imagined a meeting between England’s two football superpowers would come to what awaits at Anfield this weekend – a high-stakes battle for fourth place on the grid.
Eric Cantona evades Robbie Fowler in the 1996 FA Cup final
It will be a huge game, a potentially seismic encounter considering the stakes involved, with success or failure in the race for Champions League qualification moving into sharp focus should there be a winner and loser on Sunday afternoon.
But does the current health of the two clubs justify the fixture’s status as the biggest game in English football or has Liverpool versus United become, in a football sense, no more than two bald men fighting over a comb?
At the Nou Camp on Sunday, El Clasico will live up to the hype before a ball has even been kicked.
It is top versus second, the leaders against the European champions, with superstars such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suarez and Gareth Bale all ready to put their egos and reputations on the line in arguably the most stellar occasion in club football.
But Liverpool and United will lock horns with neither involved in the Premier League title race and both out of Europe – United have not even been in Europe this season!
Liverpool fans take pleasure in other's misfortune last year
History dictates that this game is billed as the biggest English football has to offer twice a season, and all of the numbers off the field support that assertion, but regardless of who emerges on top this weekend, a battle for fourth can never be regarded as one of the most important meetings between the two.
They have contested cup finals, fought it out for league titles, and delivered more European silverware than any domestic rivals, so Sunday should actually mark a low-point in the century-old rivalry, especially when compared to the magnitude of Barcelona versus Real hours later.
But despite Chelsea’s clear lead at the top of the Premier League and Manchester City’s recent success, no fixture has emerged to remotely challenge the Liverpool-Manchester United hegemony as the game that matters most.
In a sporting sense, it should be about more than a battle for fourth, but there have been too many battles in the past, and too much rivalry between the two cities politically and culturally, for the on-field decline to take the edge off their encounters.
Steven Gerrard makes a new friend at Old Trafford in 2014
A similar story is being played out in relation to football’s other great rivalries, to the extent that El Clasico is unique in that its two participants remain at the forefront of their domestic game, notwithstanding Atletico Madrid’s title success last season.
In Scotland, the Old Firm rivalry between Celtic and Rangers has not subsided or become less important during Rangers’ turbulent recent past, which sees Scottish football’s most successful club currently languishing in third place in the second tier.
Ajax versus Feyenoord, Dutch football’s Klassieker, continues to be the biggest fixture in the Eredvisie, despite Feyenoord failing to win a league title this century and PSV Eindhoven overtaking the Rotterdam giants in terms of championships – Ajax still lead the way with 33 titles.
In Italy, the Derby d’Italia between Juventus and Inter Milan – the country’s two most successful clubs domestically – still outranks the Milan derby as the big fixture, despite Inter’s recent decline and Juventus’s dominance.
Ray Houghton and Denis Irwin in a Liverpool-United match in 1992
And Boca Juniors versus River Plate, Argentina’s superclasico, remains the biggest club fixture in South America, even though River, the country’s most successful club with 36 titles, recently endured the ignominy of relegation.
The ebb and flow of success and failure arguably adds to the rivalry and strengthens the ‘brand’ of each derby.
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Many on Merseyside would suggest that United’s two decades of success under Sir Alex Ferguson served to intensify the bitterness and loathing towards Old Trafford, with United fans enjoying their era of dominance all the more so because they had spent a similar period of time enduring Liverpool’s trophy haul at home and in Europe.
There is also a sense of self-importance, shared by both clubs, which extends to a mutual respect of each others’ achievements and fear of the other gaining the upper hand.
When Liverpool and Manchester City were locked in a race for the title last season, a huge majority of United supporters wanted City to win the league simply because it meant denying their traditional rivals the chance to move within one championship of their record haul of twenty.
But while the reds of Manchester and Liverpool will relish being the centre of global attention on Sunday, the game should serve as a reminder of where the clubs once were and why they strive to return to the summit.
The game matters, of course it does, and it will be watched as avidly in Melbourne and Bangkok as it is in Manchester and Liverpool, but it has the air of an ageing rock band playing old songs to a nostalgic audience.
If you want the here and now of superstars, success and the scent of silverware, look to the Nou Camp rather than Anfield this Sunday.
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