Manchester City elected to place J\u00fcrgen Klopp within a large poster celebrating Pep Guardiola\u2019s decade at the club. The image, shared on X prior to kickoff, was presented as a detailed montage of Guardiola and the players who defined this period, with the club inviting supporters to \u201cpinch and zoom to catch every detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
The artwork contains portraits of Guardiola and many City figures from the last ten years, including Vincent Kompany, Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden, Erling Haaland, Fernandinho and Rodri. The only person shown who is not connected to the Sky Blues was Klopp.<\/p>\n
Klopp\u2019s Liverpool teams were the most obvious challengers to City during the period covered. The 2018\u201319 title race saw City complete 14 straight wins to finish on 98 points while Liverpool won their final nine matches to finish on 97. That 97 remains the highest total recorded by a side that did not win the title and sits as the fourth highest points tally in the history of English league football. A year later Liverpool were champions with 99 points, and 2021\u201322 produced another close duel in which both clubs exceeded 90 points and City again edged the contest.<\/p>\n
The public recognition underlined the mutual impact the two teams had on each other. Klopp has reflected on the relationship, noting in 2024 that \u201cfor a rivalry, we don\u2019t need to be disrespectful.\u201d Guardiola also paid tribute, saying, \u201cWe cannot define our period here without him … without Liverpool. Impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andy Robertson carried the same theme into his final Liverpool appearance, pausing after the 1\u20131 draw with Brentford at Anfield to acknowledge City. \u201cPep Guardiola pushed us to completely new limits,\u201d Robertson said live on Sky Sports. \u201cI think both will agree with that. And, probably, we should have won more Premier Leagues if it wasn\u2019t for that man. What a servant to Manchester City, and I wish him all the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klopp has not returned to management since leaving Liverpool two years ago and now works in a Head of Global Soccer role for Red Bull. Guardiola is set to move into an ambassadorial and technical advisory role for the City Football Group. \u201cAs a coach I\u2019m not completely finished. I haven\u2019t reached retirement age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester City included Jurgen Klopp in a commemorative poster for Pep Guardiola’s ten-year spells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,238],"tags":[220],"class_list":["post-14052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-manchester-city","tag-andy-robertson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}