Oleksandr Zinchenko had not read the work. Last summer, on holiday, in the south of France, the Arsenal left-back had nowhere to run. Not in a metaphorical sense: he had to locate a shot in his fitness for a few hours a day before returning to the Premier League.
Fortunately, he thought, he had an old friend who could help. Zinchenko saw on Instagram that Bernardo Silva, his former Manchester City teammate, is also on vacation at the Riviera. Silva had spent a few seasons in Monaco. You can simply point him in the direction of a position to train, Zinchenko dropped a message.
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Exchange, as Zinchenko believes in his autobiography, in intelligent spirits. “What for?” Bernardo wrote. ” Are you going to watch to win the Premier League again?Forget it. Stay at home. Zinchenko plays the incident for fun. However, it is indicative of the rivalry that has arisen between their respective groups that Bernardo does not seem to have helped.
Perhaps the simplest ancient parallel in the history between Manchester City and Arsenal, the one that has animated the last two Premier League seasons, and the one that will shine for Emirates on Sunday, is the dispute between Liverpool and Chelsea that erupted in life two decades ago.
The two conflicts are necessarily similar: the effective old opposed to a new one, the aristocracy opposed to the upstarts, the status quo opposed to the insurgents; Hostility is based not only on a mutual pursuit of honor, but a basic war of words over who has a right to themselves for themselves members of the elite.
In texture, however, they are different. There was, of course, the mutual antipathy between Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez, the managers of Chelsea and Liverpool at the height of their antagonism. John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole.
However, for the maximum part, it manifested itself in the explosions of press convention gunfire and the occasional sabotage of England’s desperate attempts to win a foreign tournament. In this sense, the maximum precursor applicable to Arsenal’s existing clash with Manchester City is the one that Arsene Wenger and his team enjoyed with Manchester United at the beginning of this century.
In this case, there was no foundation over low heat: Arsenal and United see themselves, and reluctantly, the members of the Triumvirate of Classic Power of English Football.
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The timbre of the dispute, however, is the same. Their meetings were moody, heavy, proportionate at once with sense and rancour. The dates not only between the clubs, but the groups themselves are bitter, toxic and, above all, things, things were petty. They exchanged beards in public. They bristled in the tunnel, confronted each other at the checkout and threw a pizza out of the locker room. They shared, for a time, a mutual hatred too hard for anyone interested to hide.
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More than 20 years later, the echoes are clear. Until relatively recently, it would have been imaginable to feel that Arsenal were doing a lot of heavy lifting in terms of rivalry with the city.
Pep Guardiola’s appearance had naturally played the role of a final boss in the minds of Mikel Arteta and his players: the city, after all, the team would have to review if they were to win a Premier League top name from the height of their dispute with Manchester United. City the criterion by which Arsenal judged itself.
When Arsenal were beaten 3-1 through the Emirates City in February 2023, Arteta used it as a teachable moment, evidence that there were some mistakes his groups may not make “at this level”. A few months later, when the city beat Arsenal 4-1 at the Etihad, he suggested that his players be “humble” enough to settle for the older team having won.
It’s no surprise, then, that Arsenal treated their EU shield penalty this summer as a milestone. Aaron Ramsdale described it as “a statement, a marker. That intellectual block is gone,” he said. We are in a position to continue now. “
By beating Guardiola’s aspect in the league in October 2023, Arsenal’s first win over the city in the Premier League for 8 years, it felt even more important. “Everyone knows how hard it is to play them,” said Gabriel Jesus, channeling his Randy Quaid from the era of inner independence. “But it’s not to beat them. “
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However, just as significant were the consequences of this game. As the players walked off the pitch after Arsenal’s 1-0 win, the club’s sex coach Nicolas Jover, a former city employee, tried to shake hands with Kyle Walker. Walker has spoken out, because he remembered Jover refusing to shake hands with the city’s players after Arsenal’s previous defeats in the year. Erling Haaland was also given involved, which caused a slightly invisible noise. It turned out that the rivalry didn’t just paint them one way. have been Giventen at the head of Arsenal. But Arsenal was also in the city.
Over the next year, this has become increasingly clear. Usually, even the enmities that enthusiasts feel peak are not reflected among the managers of the clubs involved. ARSENAL and TOTTYHAM are allies in Premier League meetings. The dates between John Henry and Joel Glazer, the main owners of Liverpool and Manchester United, are not only cordial but definitely friendly.
Arsenal have discovered, however, that the rivalry with Manchester City is not so well limited to the pitch; Rather, there is a detail of the general war. Relations between the two clubs have been strained for some time over their opposing perspectives on the legitimacy of the Premier League’s currency controls, and possibly even parted ways beyond the ongoing investigation into breaching them.
However, it is unusual that much of this tension deserves to be made public. In August, for example, it emerged that Tim Lewis, Arsenal’s executive vice-chairman, was not providing Phil Foden being named last year’s Professional Association player of the year. Lewis and his delegation actually only had to leave the occasion in Manchester early to exercise in London. This did not save him from receiving a planned provocation.
The same goes for the fact that Lewis didn’t shake hands with his city with opposite numbers at the end of Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at the Etihad in September last year. It was, under the circumstances, a forgivable, or at least understandable, understandable, surveillance. Tensions can be high, even in corporate suites, in the warmth of the moment. As things are rarely noticed, let alone used as lighters. This was it.
At this point, of course, any hope of covering up the extent of the displeasure between the two groups had long since disappeared. It is in this game that all the acrimony has been laid bare; The controversy that was stirred up began before the last whistle and rumbled to the following week’s high. HAALAND celebrated John Stones’ past equalizer by throwing the ball to Gabriel’s head; The Norwegian, hardly a fiery character, hailed the end of the game by calling Gabriel Jesus a “clown” and urging Arteta to “stay humble”.
Minutes later, when Stones not only criticized Arsenal’s cynical technique, “you can call them wise and dirty,” he said, but advised that they didn’t even deserve credit for excelling in the game’s dark arts. “He wouldn’t say they got over it,” he said, furiously. They’ve been doing it for a few years. “
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This is enough to draw the two managers into the conflict. Unlike Benitez and Mourinho, or Alex Ferguson and Wenger, Guardiola and Arteta were keen to stay above the fray; After all, they are not just former colleagues but genuine friends. Arteta, however, eluded enough to recommend that City were in no position to communicate about tactical fouls of set-up; Guardiola duly encouraged his former lieutenant to produce receipts.
However, the most acute comments came here from Bernardo, a little faster offering a view about this instance than when he asked to recommend an educational floor in southern France.
The city’s rivalry with Arsenal, he said, was “different” from the one that preceded it with Liverpool. “Maybe because Liverpool have already won the Premier League,” he said. “Arsenal didn’t do it. Liverpool won the Champions League. Arsenal did not. Here it is so evident that it is not really a subtext.
Of course, in the months that followed, the context of those observations changed. The view makes it transparent that it is a Manchester city that is already reaching its limit, flowing on smoke, desperately for reinforcements. It’s aura for as long as possible, a city of Manchester aware that they could soon see Arsenal as something much closer to equals.
Guardiola’s team takes to the Emirates this week Finish is not the team that played such a big part in Arsenal’s imagination; It is, instead, a team caught between the end and a beginning, a shadow of what was and the initial definition of what is to come. This is a city, for the first time in years, that Arsenal do not want to fear.
However, it is not how Arsenal will treat him. It may be Liverpool that Arteta’s team will have to chase if they need to win the Premier League title, if they need to turn out that theirs is an adventure with an inevitable destination, but it is still the city, because it has been the city, that they will have to overcome.
“It’s a battle, it’s a war,” Gabriel said, just minutes after Haaland’s “act of provocation” in September. “Now it’s over, and we’re waiting for them. “
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(Top photo: Erling Haaland and Gabriel Magalhaes; via Robbie Jay Barratt/Ama Getty Images)