The Friendly Derby is anything but.
Jurgen Klopp’s first taste of the less than cordial relations between Everton and Liverpool will come on Wednesday night at Anfield.
The city rivals will clash for the 226th time in history, with little on the line for both, apart from local bragging rights.
But that all important conversation on Thursday morning between rivals fans coould have Jurgen Klopp’s wife as the most worried woman in all of Merseyside.
The ex-Borussia Dortmund manager has spoken to the Liverpool Echo about what he is expecting in the local derby, and recalled his early days with Dortmund, when they faced rivals Schalke in his first Ruhr derby in 2008.
The game did not to go plan in the early stages with Dortmund down 3-0 within minutes, and Klopp knew that unless his team turned things around, he may be out of a job after just four games.
“In Dortmund they say the derby is more important than the championship. You can feel it around the game. My first derby there didn’t start so well…. Schalke should have scored another goal.
Kevin Kuranyi, it was 10cm, maybe 15cm from the goal. He missed the ball! It could have been 4-0! In that moment I really thought about my wife Ulla. I thought: ‘I hope she knows where the suitcases still are because we might need to pack!’
It would have changed everything if they had made it 4-0. After that we came back.”
Dortmund did eventually come back to draw the game 3-3, and the game was a big lesson for Klopp in satisfying the local’s desires above silverware first.
There is no chance Klopp will need to be thinking of his wife getting the suitcases out of the wardrobe this week, regardless of what happens at Anfield.
But it might just be handy to now where they are in case.
