It was the beginning of autumn in 2015 when, with a team dressed in red in the middle of a crisis, Jürgen Klopp was selected to replace Brendan Rodgers as the coach of Liverpool.
Although the latter was close to reaching the title in 2014, eventually the sale of Luis Suárez and Sterling undermined a team who also saw how Steven Gerrard, perhaps the best player in the team history, left Liverpool with a hole of charisma and leadership that seemed improbable to fill up again.
Nevertheless, the German coach did a decent first season reaching two finals but lost both of them.
However, Liverpool was starting to look like the Borussia Dortmund who won two Bundesliga against the powerful Bayern Munich. Certainly, Klopp has been trying to implement that style of game based in pressing high to provoke mistakes from the opponents and being offensive all the time.
The European adventure
Liverpool returned to the Champions League in the season 2017/2018, where in spite to not being considered among the favourites, they finished first in their group and practically sentenced every draw in the first leg, thrashing Porto, Roma and Manchester City.
In order to reach the final and at the same time finishing in the fourth position at the Premier League, Klopp has been taking players capable of assimilating his idea of dynamism.
Therefore, fast players such as Salah or Mane were indeed required.
In fact, alongside Firmino, the three of them formed perhaps the best-attacking team in all Europe and thus they became the most prolific team in a single season of the Champions League history. They scored 47 goals in just 15 games. On the other hand, the front-back are under pressure by players such as Sturridge or Shaqiri, who are showing their level of quality in every game.
Manchester City keep their sharpness
Even though winning the Premier League twice seems an almost impossible task considering the strength of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United or Tottenham Hotspur, Guardiola's team don't appear to give any concession to their rivals. Despite not having De Bruyne, the Citizens are not looking weaker than the last season, and apart from the hesitant beginning of their European campaign, they have so much depth in their squad that probably Mahrez, Gündogan or Jesus will be on the bench tomorrow.
Clearly, it will be another clash of styles between Liverpool and Manchester City, who have finally found two managers worthy of these glorious teams. Klopp and Guardiola, who had already triumphed in Germany, are now writing their own story in the land where football was invented.
