Fierce, passionate rivalries are an essential ingredient of football, the “salt in the soup” as Jurgen Klopp once memorably described them.
Some are as eternal as the game itself and the clubs involved, like the red-blue divide which unites Merseyside and the historical battles of will with Manchester United, while others are of their time and crackle before fading. The idea of Manchester City and Chelsea being major rivals to Liverpool would have been laughable to those who grew up in the era when the nouveaux-riche pair were often more concerned with preserving top-flight status than competing for the top prizes at home and abroad.
But the game's cyclical nature means that while some disputes endure, others are more fleeting as the resumption of one of the Reds’ most unlikely but eventful rivalries in the FA Cup quarter-finals this weekend highlights. Liverpool’s trip to the City Ground on Sunday evening will be their first meeting with Nottingham Forest this century, which seems inconceivable to those who remember the repeated high-octane encounters between the pair in the 1970s and 80s but is the reality with the East Midlands club still seeking to regain the Premier League status they lost following a third relegation in six years in 1999.
