Andy Mitten column in English
On the rivalry between United and Liverpool
Manchester United chairman Martin Edwards telephoned Liverpool director Peter Robinson. Edwards explained that he and Alex Ferguson would like to come to Anfield to see the flowers already covering half the pitch in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster. They wanted the visit to be private. They drove to Liverpool, paid their respects and, as they left Anfield, wrote a substantial cheque for the Hillsborough appeal. That wasn’t made public until last year, when it came from the Liverpool end.
It may not always seem obvious, but Manchester United and Liverpool get on. United and City don’t, United and Leeds didn’t, but United and Liverpool do. The fans don’t, but the clubs do.
Until the 1960s, there was no great rivalry between the pair. United’s main rivals were City, Liverpool’s Everton. When Mancunian Phil Chisnall left United for Liverpool in a £25,000 transfer in 1964, it was no big deal. I spoke to him this week at his home in Urmston, the suburb where he grew up four miles from Old Trafford.
“I was called into Matt Busby’s room at Old Trafford and Bill Shankly was there,” recalls Chisnall, now 70 and retired. “They negotiated my future and I was happy to join Liverpool. They were an up and coming club who had been promoted after years in the second division and won the first division title under Bill Shankly in 1964. They had a great young side.”
Liverpool had been a second division club for most of the 50s before Shankly took control. He got rid of 24 players when he arrived in 1959 and revolutionised Anfield. Chisnall hoped to be part of their future, but it didn’t work out for him. He blames a lack of aggression in his play. Not a single player has moved between the club since.
The relationship between Shankly and Busby was always close and they came from similar backgrounds in Scotland.
“They were like father and son and thought the world of each other,” recalls Chisnall.
When Shankly was asked by Liverpool’s chairman if he’d like to manage the best club in the country, he replied: “Why, is Matt Busby packing it in?”
Busby had been Liverpool’s captain – their greatest captain according to pre-war literature – and he never felt any animosity towards his former club.
Pat Crerand, who signed for United in 1963, used to go to watch Liverpool if United weren’t playing.
“I’ve been to Anfield many times and had no real problems whatsoever,” he says. “I love going to Liverpool for football matches. Liverpudlians are football aficionados and I’ve got a great deal of respect for genuine Liverpool fans. Each year before United play at Anfield, I have a chat with a group of older fans close to the Hillsborough memorial. I like them and we have the banter and talk about games from years past. I was talking to them a couple of years ago when one Liverpool fan recognized me and steamed into me, calling me a ‘Manc bastard’. I wasn’t angry, just embarrassed. The Liverpool fans must have felt the same because they gave him the biggest verbal going over he’d had in his life and he scuttled off towards the Kop.”
Shankly would regularly call fellow Scot Crerand on a Sunday morning to discuss football.
When United became the first English club to win the European Cup in 1968, the Liverpool Echo reported ‘British football can be proud of the United team who gave their all to give Matt Busby the Cup he cherishes above all else. It’s been a long, long drive for United to reach the top in Europe — no one will begrudge them being the first English club to make it.’ Liverpool director, Peter Robinson, was at Wembley – as a guest of United.
When United were banned from using Old Trafford for two games in 1971 after a knife was thrown onto the Old Trafford pitch, Liverpool didn’t hesitate to offer the use of Anfield, where United duly beat Arsenal 3-1. Liverpool had offered their players after the Munich air crash too.
The mood changed in the 70s, with regular violence between fans. It continued into the 80s and 90s, and though a trip to Anfield is less fraught than it once was, one United fan was seriously assaulted in 2009 as he made his way across Stanley Park.
Hatred persists in the stadiums and online when usually (faceless and anonymous) fans hurl insults, but there are many exceptions and contradictions among those who profess to hate.
One of the few cities which doesn’t have a United supporters’ club is Liverpool, though it does have United fans there like John Brindley, 58.
“I married a Liverpool girl and have lived here for 23 years,” he says. “She’s an Evertonian, but understands me going to football because her dad had a season ticket at Goodison for over 60 years. She helps me apply for tickets. My first wife hated football. She said, ‘It’s me or United’. So I left.
“I’ve met a lot of good Scousers – most are just obsessed by football like us. And I’ve met others who don’t like me because I’m from Manchester. At a wedding, one lad turned his chair round and stopped speaking when he found out where I was from. I’ve lost Mancunian mates who think I’m a Scouser too. They don’t see the person, just the fact that I live in Liverpool.
“I can count on one hand the number of games I’ve missed in the last forty years. There have been plenty of highs and lows, the lowest being losing the league at Liverpool in ’92. I stood on the Kop and some of them were wearing Leeds shirts and singing: “Have you ever seen United win the league?” I had twice in the 60s, but I was convinced that we wouldn’t win it again.”
United have won the league many times since. Liverpool haven’t, something which would have been unthinkable in the 1980s. United fans will taunt Liverpool with chants of ‘19’ (our record title haul) and Liverpool will sing five times (more European Cups than any other English team). And while the rivalry festers, not everyone is blind to the fact that there’s a great deal of respect between the clubs.
