“Classico” of the third decade

The meeting between Manchester City and Liverpool has become the “Classico” of the third decade of the twenty-first century… and it always takes place at the rhythm of a very fast struggle, leaving the viewer breathless, entertained, excited and tense… and what an unforgettable success it has been for English football and for Manchester City, the best team in the world. And Liverpool is the first competitor to the best team in the world.
Yes, the match between Real Madrid and Barcelona is no longer the “Earth Clásico”, especially after it lost its heroes, Ronaldo, Messi and Benzema.
The Spaniards have sold the Barcelona-Real Madrid match to the world for decades, as the most watched match on the planet… and this promotion was important for the Spanish football industry… but the match between the two poles remained unique in itself in the Spanish stadium, while the match between Manchester City and Liverpool took place in a higher competitive context. In the context of a race whose circle is expanding and includes at that moment 7 teams…this is an important and invisible difference between the “Premier League” and “La Liga”.
The joy of the high level of competitiveness in the Premier League is not the only reason why the meeting between the “City” and “Reds” teams turned into an international movie that is widely viewed around the planet. Due to the high technical and tactical level, and the high temperature of the conflict and rhythm between the two teams.
About the result, Guardiola said: “They are happy, we are a little less happy, and they are happier, but it is football.”
The Spanish coach summed up everything with that sentence. “City” presented a display of successive waves of attack that resembled successive waves of the sea. This is a team that pushes you not to approach its players because of the way they play. For example, the conflict between Jeremy Doku and Alexander Allison was a high-level technical duel. It alone is worth the price of the ticket, as Guardiola decided that the passage to Alisson Becker’s goal begins with Doku, and Ake was a smart, strong defender and attacker, and Akanji was excellent, as was Rodri, and both of them covered very wide defensive and offensive distances, but we are facing a collective team in which individual skills are mixed with tactics. And plans that everyone practices.
The English cannot leave a number… Thus, City won every match at its stadium in 2023 in all competitions, and another victory would have equaled the record set by Sunderland between 1890 and 1892. Do you realize where that period was between the two years of Sunderland?
If you ask me who will win the league title this season, I will answer you with a poem written by former US Secretary of Defense Ronald Rumsfeld. The Christian Science Monitor published these verses by the Defense Minister years ago, in which the poet Rumsfeld says:
“as we know
There are things we don’t know
Some we know we don’t know
Others we don’t know that we don’t know
The things we don’t know…we don’t know
And the things we know we may not know.”
** Excuse me, Your Excellency, that is not an answer, nor is it poetry, when it was translated into Arabic.. I thank you because the poem sums up unexpectedness!