Sky Sports are hyping up Sunday’s Carabao Cup Final as the game that is “17 years in the making.”
It is a reference to the last time Chelsea and Liverpool met in the climax of the then Carling Cup in 2005, but it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest fans have been counting down the days ever since to a League Cup final rematch.
It would be more accurate to describe it as a rivalry that’s 17 years in the making, because prior to that final there was little history of antagonism between the two clubs.
It changed that day in Cardiff, when Jose Mourinho was sent off by police after giving the hush sign to travelling Kopites following a Steven Gerrard own goal which ushered in extra-time, a defeat for Rafa Benitez’s side and the birth of a mutual loathing.
The main theatre of war was the Champions League where they played each other six times between 2005 and 2007, with the ultra-cautious tactics of Mourinho and Benitez ensuring only three goals were scored across ten hours.
After the 2007 semi-final Argentina’s World Cup-winning coach Jorge Valdano wrote that watching those games was like watching "s*** hanging from a stick."
He added: "If football is going the way Chelsea and Liverpool are taking it we had better be ready to wave goodbye to any expression of cleverness and talent.”
Harsh words (written for a Spanish audience by the former Real Madrid coach) especially in the case of Benitez, who had a massive spending gap to close with Roman Abramovich-funded Mourinho.
But after that series of dogged chess matches which lacked risk-taking or attacking verve, his words had merit.
Fast-forward 15 years to the last game between these two sides and Valdano’s description could not have looked more out of place.
Last month’s 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge was a pulsating, end-to-end classic which left observers like Gary Neville purring: “I was looking at the game thinking ‘how would I play in that match?’ I would have coped, maybe, but that is a different level to what I had to face.
"The players now are technically better and the level of the coaches is higher than it was 12 years ago.”
Those coaches, Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel, have instilled a fearless, fluid, energetic mindset which is ambitious and entertaining.
The Germans have been at the forefront of a shift to a high-pressing version of Total Football which has left former coaching giants like Mourinho and Benitez looking like yesterday’s men.
The pair are still seriously admired managers who, given backing and time, are capable of organising their way to cup triumphs but it’s been a long time since their pragmatic footballing philosophies, which obsessed on not conceding chances, won hearts and minds. Or major trophies.
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Mourinho, who hasn’t won a league for seven years, currently sits eighth in Serie A with Roma, having been sacked from his last three jobs in England.
Benitez is currently licking his wounds after a car-crash spell in charge of Everton was brutally ended last month, when even those Blues who forgave his Liverpool pedigree could not forgive his defensive tactics. How times change.
Jose and Rafa were two of the hottest coaching properties of their generation, and are still largely loved by Chelsea and Liverpool fans for the great nights they gave them.
They created history at those clubs and their legacy lives on. Not least in the intense rivalry they created between two of England’s top sides which resumes at Wembley on Sunday.
This time though, under Klopp and Tuchel, the chances are the game these rivals produce won’t resemble a foul-smelling stick but a breath of fresh air.
