José Mourinho is only four years older than Jürgen Klopp but in football terms it can feel as though there is a lifetime between them. In part it is an issue of tactics: the hard, high press of which Klopp is such a devotee is modish. When Liverpool and Manchester City went to Tottenham this season and engaged in breathless, percussive styles, it felt like the football of today, the freshest ideas being pitched against each other. Mourinho’s style is more conventional. That does not render it invalid but, with the two managers’ sides poised to meet at Anfield on Monday night, it is part of a general sense of familiarity about the Manchester United manager that may be damaging.
The great Argentinian coach Carlos Bianchi, who won four Copa Libertadores with Vélez Sarsfield and Boca Juniors, once laid out 10 “unwritten rules” of successful coaching for the magazine Management Deportivo. Not a single one of them referred to on-pitch strategy. For him the most important thing was to cultivate “el liderazgo”. The term literally means “leadership” but for Bianchi it was more than that – it was about developing a cult of personality. It is a strategy at least partially shared by Mourinho and Klopp.
Related: José Mourinho’s Manchester United: how has he fared so far? | Jamie Jackson
Related: Jürgen Klopp: the ‘energy giver’ who made Liverpool believe again | Andy Hunter
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