Then both Klopp and Guardiola, again and again, turned their fire on the Premier League’s decision to plow on through this cramped and compacted season with each team allowed only three substitutions in each game. The Premier League stands alone in its reverence for tradition. The players, he said, were being given “no break, no rest.” Both demanded that the discussion be held again. For 45 minutes, it lived up to its ambitious billing, the sort of game one would expect between the two best teams in the country. Liverpool tore at City and City tore at Liverpool as, in the background, the strategies kept shifting and the chess pieces kept moving and the ideas kept whirring.

Source: International New York Times November 09, 2020 14:26 UTC