It has proved the defining managerial rivalry of the era in England, one transported from abroad, where they had coached the two superpowers in a major league. Not Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, because that turned out to be a distinctly one-sided affair, but the Catalan and Jurgen Klopp. The last few years have not been Real Madrid against Barcelona part II, as many forecast in 2016, but Bayern Munich versus Borussia Dortmund, only with a twist in the tale.

In England, as when both were in Germany, Guardiola has won the league titles. This time, however, Klopp has conquered Europe. Even with inferior league finishes, he has cemented a status as Guardiola’s nemesis. Only one manager has faced Guardiola at least four times and won more than he has lost: Klopp. His total of eight victories is as many as Mourinho and Mauricio Pochettino, Guardiola’s two next most frequent conquerors, have mustered between them.

And yet it is a rivalry with a difference, less bitter enmity than mutual admiration society. Klopp has called Guardiola the best manager in the world. The Manchester City manager stated in May that Liverpool, along with Barcelona, were the finest side he has faced in his managerial career. Guardiola spent spring saying that both City and Liverpool deserved to win the title; they are not sentiments Mourinho often voiced about whoever came second behind his sides.

There may be three men in this particular happy marriage – Guardiola eulogised about both Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino even before last season advanced the case they are the planet’s three outstanding managers and named Liverpool and Tottenham as the two teams, besides his own, he most liked to watch – and it is fascinating to see similar ideas came via different influences: Guardiola’s from Johan Cruyff, Klopp’s owing something to Arrigo Sacchi via his mentor Wolfgang Frank, Pochettino’s courtesy of Marcelo Bielsa. Between them, they are the vanguard of modern football.

And yet as Guardiola and Klopp reconvene in the Community Shield, it is with a notable divide. The City manager’s actions have been shaped by his Liverpool counterpart, but not vice versa. That is not to say that events at the Etihad Stadium have not affected Klopp – in any other season, against any other team, his haul of 97 points would have rendered Liverpool champions – but he has proceeded on his idiosyncratic path, largely impervious to Guardiola’s methods.

In contrast, City have been moulded by Liverpool. Their manager has been the Reds’ most perceptive analyst. “There is not another team in the world attacking this way with so many players... inside,” Guardiola said in 2016. It marks a difference in thought: Liverpool’s narrow front three, quick combinations coming in closer confines, are the antithesis of the City counterparts, who offer game-stretching width, though prolific returns from supposed wingers are a common denominator.

Guardiola has admitted his first game in Germany, a 4-2 defeat to Klopp’s Dortmund, was a culture shock. Liverpool’s intensity felt a factor in City’s 2017 rebuild. These managers’ first meeting in England was Liverpool’s 1-0 win at Anfield on New Year’s Eve in 2016. They were fresher, faster, fitter. Together with a defeat to Pochettino’s Spurs, it showed the flaws in Guardiola’s inheritance, an ageing group with four thirty-something full-backs. They were all gone the following year. A younger, quicker team was assembled.

(Image: PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

Because while Guardiola is indelibly associated with passing, he has become almost as much an evangelist for pace and pressing as Pochettino and Klopp. It forged a desire to produce a side that can out-run as well as out-pass opponents. The player who ran furthest in any Premier League match last season was Bernardo Silva; 13.7 km, against Liverpool.

If Guardiola’s biggest win over Klopp, 5-0 in September 2017, could seem the ultimate vindication of that change in strategy, seeds of future problems were nevertheless sowed. Their aggregate score that season was 9-9, but Liverpool won three of four meetings. Mohamed Salah was sacrificed after Sadio Mane’s first-half red card at the Etihad, but only after providing evidence he could haunt Nicolas Otamendi.

The frazzled Argentinian conceded possession when Mane scored Liverpool’s second in a 4-3 league win at Anfield. By the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final, Guardiola had first swapped the Argentinian with Vincent Kompany, to try and get the captain and usual right-sided centre-back, to take on the Egyptian. But Klopp responded by switching Salah to striker to torment Otamendi and Guardiola, in a final bid to shield a liability, eventually directed Fernandinho to mark Liverpool’s top scorer. Guardiola had been calling Otamendi “superman”. The following season, a less catchy but more accurate description would be that of fourth-choice centre-back. Salah and Liverpool had changed the pecking order.

Liverpool’s three-goal blitzes at Anfield – in nine minutes in the Premier League, 19 in the Champions League – highlighted City’s Achilles heel, the tendency of a team accustomed to dominating to flounder in the wake of conceding. Their high-speed breaks showed the way for others to beat City.

The 2017-18 meetings showed that Guardiola will customise his team to face Klopp, but not vice versa. A recurring theme is an attempt to get more players “inside”, to use his word, to combat Liverpool’s numbers in central areas. If leftfield moves then – Aymeric Laporte at left-back, Ilkay Gundogan in a strange sort of no-man’s land off the right wing – led to accusations Guardiola was overthinking things, their most recent encounter on Merseyside was evidence not just that he was scarred by past clashes with Klopp but that a purist would go pragmatic in an attempt to halt his nemesis.

If a staple of Guardiola’s favoured 4-3-3 is to have two free eights, as Kevin de Bruyne deemed them, two men who could be No. 10s in attacking midfield roles, he went to Anfield with two holding players, with Bernardo Silva in the sort of role Rafa Benitez, that admirer of duos of anchormen, would recognise. Guardiola set out to nullify Klopp. It worked. Despite Riyad Mahrez’s skied penalty, City drew 0-0. Liverpool only had two shots on target. Factor in John Stones’ goal-line clearance in the Etihad rematch and it was arguably the point that won City the league. Liverpool only dropped 12 points against the teams who finished beneath them, but that was enough.

The margins are narrow, the concepts similar, the players ones both admire. Klopp tried to sign De Bruyne for Dortmund and did manage Gundogan. Guardiola considered Virgil van Dijk. He used to raid Dortmund, even if that seemed a policy constructed by Bayern’s powerbrokers: if you can’t beat them, buy them. “He had better teams, it is true,” Klopp conceded last October. But if he had inferior personnel, the collective amassed wins.

In the manner of great rivalries, they have both enhanced and damaged each other. Without Guardiola, Klopp would surely be the reigning Premier League champion. Without Klopp, Guardiola might have won back-to-back Champions Leagues (there was more than a hint of Liverpool about the way Pochettino’s Spurs eliminated City last year).

But it is Klopp who has remained steadfast in his path, pursuing the strategies that fascinate the intellectual in Guardiola and Guardiola who has tailored his tactics because of Klopp. And yet, while looking for full-backs who double up as running machines, midfielders who are also athletes, for a team of Liverpool’s power, he has never quite tried to mimic Klopp’s idiosyncratic system. If actions speak louder than words, and the compliments of two managers who often praise each other are, perhaps the sincerest form of flattery is not imitation but the nullification City mastered at Anfield last season.