Errr...

It's like a pirate ship full of scurvy dogs, vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells,

and a couple of half-decent football teams every now and again!

And a couple of half-decent bands.

Much the same as Liverpool, really.

Liverpool.

Manchester.

Identity.

Originality.

Industry.

Radicalism.

History.

Music.

Football.

Liverpool the city, if I had to describe it I think I'd just use one word.

Famous.

To us, the centre of the known universe, innit?

Music, fashion, politics.

You can't be coming from Liverpool if you're not involved in one of them.

It had The Beatles, didn't it? And after that it struggled.

It is a prettier city than Manchester.

It's just wasted on you lot, innit?

And the people here, we're different.

Tony Wilson used to say, "We do things differently here".

You can't bull**** when you're in Manchester, you've got to be yourself.

It's working-class,

it's dead cocky,

we basically love ourselves.

Two of the world's greatest cities, 30 miles apart,

so much in common but so much that divides them.

Our little corner of England has probably contributed more to sport,

to culture, to music,

to science, to technology,

to industry than any other corner of the world.

But we don't recognise that in each other.

Ron Atkinson said once, if you go to Anfield it's like going to Vietnam.

You just turn into an animal when you're in the ground,

you just lose your head, it's embarrassing.

If someone filmed you, you'd be going, "That's not me, is it?"

But where did this rivalry start, how has it changed through the years

and why does it keep getting stronger?

300 years ago Liverpool built the first enclosed commercial wet dock in the world.

That's where it all began, I think, for Liverpool, that's where it all went boom.

It speeded up the loading and offloading of the cargos

and it speeded up Liverpool's trade.

This was the second city

of the British Empire,

a thriving port city.

There was that many ships lined up on the Pier Head

people couldn't even see the Mersey beyond it,

and there was people there from the Americas, from Asia,

with these foreign tongues,

who brought so much wealth to Liverpool.

Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick,

he likened Liverpool's dock system to the Great Lakes in North America.

They were that huge and that impressive.

At the same time, fuelled by the Industrial Revolution,

Manchester began to boom.

We're a people of doers.

We invented the whole UK textile industry.

Arkwright's Mill, that was

the first industrial building on earth.

And it became known the world over as 'Cottonopolis'.

The hotbed of early labour movements,

Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto for Manchester.

A really radical city; the TUC were founded here, Suffragettes, Peterloo Massacre -

the history is astonishing.

The two cities were even linked by the world's first steam-powered railway.

But in the late 1800s, Manchester began to suffer an economic decline

and things were soon being pointed at the neighbours on the Mersey.

The raw materials that were coming into Manchester had to come into Liverpool,

the biggest port in the country at the time, bigger than London.

It was costing a fortune.

ANDY MITTEN: That was what led to the Manchester Ship Canal being built.

They wanted to bypass Liverpool, the greed of the Liverpool merchants,

building all your grand houses in the centre of Liverpool,

which are still very nice.

Mancunians are very proud of the Ship Canal

and very quick to say that it effectively brought the sea to Manchester.

Xxxxxx you lot off a bit, didn't it?

And that's probably the start of the whole rivalry.

Football was becoming a regular pastime within northern working-class communities.

And one of the many new teams springing up was a certain Newton Heath.

Newton Heath started up in 1878, playing in amongst the cotton mills

and cramped factories of inner-city east Manchester.

For a short time they wore those famous green and gold shirts

and were reasonably successful.

14 years later Liverpool FC were formed, in 1892, wearing blue and white.

While Liverpool were on the up, Newton Heath were on the slide.

In 1894, the year the Ship Canal was opened,

Newton Heath were rock-bottom of the First Division.

To save their skin, they entered into a playoff against the Second Division champions.

Liverpool were the champions of the old second tier,

and it was a one-off game, a playoff,

and Liverpool won 2-0.

That was the first really when we put one over on United,

or Newton Heath as they were called.

By 1902 they became Manchester United,

and by 1909 they moved to Old Trafford.

The first game at Old Trafford was against Liverpool, I forget the score...

I can't remember the score.

Liverpool came to town and beat them 4-3.

They must have been a bit sore about that, they probably owed us one from an early time.

The next notable meeting between the teams would go down in history.

But for the wrong reasons.

On Good Friday 1915, United were facing relegation, and Liverpool came to their aid.

United won 2-0 and avoided the drop,

but later investigations found that players

from both sides had rigged the game.

It was an infamous episode

in the history of both clubs.

Liverpool won two league titles in the 1920s, while United stagnated.

Then, in the wake of the Second World War, the rivalry changed forever.

Matt Busby played about 120 games for Liverpool,

but I think his Liverpool career was disrupted by the war,

and afterwards he was assistant manager to George Kay,

but this opportunity arose at Manchester United to be a manager in his own right,

and he went for it.

Matt Busby wanted to be the Liverpool manager,

but he was only offered a coaching role.

When he left, I think there was a bit of animosity there,

because they usually give them a going away match, or testimonial match,

and it never happened.

And I think if you talk to Liverpool fans of a certain vintage,

they've got an awful lot of respect for Matt Busby.

A full salute for Matt Busby. If you read about him, one of the nicest people,

doesn't matter who you support, you'd never say a bad word about him.

I think - and I'm ashamed to say this -

I was probably 16 when I found out he'd played for Liverpool.

Which is a remarkably late time to know such a fact.

Especially if we consider that, in the 1960s, he was voted by Liverpool fans

to be their captain in their perfect team of the last 100 years.

I've always maintained this to United fans - his heart was in Liverpool.

Under Busby, United continued to blossom.

They won the league in 1956 and 1957.

They had a young team that people tipped to go on and achieve greatness,

But then, disaster struck.

I can remember the moment when I heard about the Munich air disaster.

I think that was the first time I ever saw my father cry.

The city was numb, as it would be if it happened now to any major football club.

It's a terrible thing to happen.

I think Liverpool, like a lot of clubs at the time,

said they'd lend players to United in the aftermath of Munich.

And rightly so.

It was on the front page of the Echo.

That generation of Liverpool fans would have remembered Matt playing for Liverpool,

so to find out he was part of that would have been awful.

The 1960s saw Liverpool and Manchester United competing directly for honours

for the very first time.

Matt Busby's old friend Bill Shankly took over at Liverpool

and hauled them out of the Second Division.

Busby and Shankly were born between 30 miles of each other.

When Shankly first arrived at Liverpool,

it was Matt Busby that kept convincing him not to leave.

In 1963 United won the cup. The following year Liverpool won the league.

In 1965 United won the league and Liverpool won the cup,

in '66 Liverpool won the league,

and then the following year, in '67, United won the league.

So at this time, in a sporting sense, the two clubs are really going up against each other.

There was definitely a competitiveness there between the two teams,

but I think, again, for fans of that generation there wasn't the same edge

I don't think that there was with Leeds.

The rivalry was there, but the hate wasn't there then.

It wasn't there then.

My first away Liverpool match was April 1963.

You could go where you wanted, so we just went into the Kop.

Can you imagine Liverpool fans now

going around the ground and getting involved with Man United,

or they come round to the Kop? Cos that's what they used to do years ago.

All the Liverpool supporters were bothered about - "Can you see the pitch, son?"

You've got this little lad from Higher Openshaw

on the east side of Manchester being looked after by the Kopites.

Just imagine that happening today.

It just wouldn't happen, put it that way!

I used to speak to my dad about it when he was alive,

and he said there was never any rivalry against Liverpool per se.

I remember watching Liverpool against Arsenal 1971, Steve Heighway,

didn't they go 1-0 up, Liverpool?

COMMENTATOR: Still Heighway, dangerous indeed - oh, goal!

We supported Liverpool, because they were nearer to Manchester.

You speak to my old man - "I had time for Liverpool,

"great team, great manager, Bill Shankly."

Loved Roger Hunt, amazingly, what a great player he was.

A real chance for Roger Hunt!

He'd always say, my dad, that the best player he ever saw at Anfield was George Best.

If not the best player that ever lived, he's equal to the best player that ever lived.

Real chance here for Best!

I think I once read that Bill Shankly thought the same.

In 1968 Manchester United found themselves on the cusp of greatness

when they became the first English side to reach a European Cup final.

A feat Liverpool were denied three years earlier by Inter Milan.

I think it caught the imagination of the nation,

because of what had gone on 10 years before.

As kids we didn't really think too much about it,

we just thought Liverpool were a great team

and United had won the European Cup.

We weren't thinking, "They've won the first European Cup",

that wasn't in our mindset, because Celtic had done it.

It was sort of the end of an era, the end of Sir Matt Busby's dynasty.

Because after that United drained away.

Football fan culture was changing.

The gentle mockery of the 1960s terraces was giving way to something entirely different.

Society changed, factor in social issues such as football hooliganism

and the rivalry became very heated.

Huge rivalries between football clubs started when people were more mobile.

When they started to go to away games.

All right, there was a trickle at first,

but then it became a fashion.

Opposition fans started singing on the terraces.

By people singing, that's identification.

♫ We shall not, we shall not be moved! ♫

You can go the match with your mates and stand with them and scream with them.

My first trip to Old Trafford was with my dad in November '72,

and I couldn't understand the level of animosity.

As a youngster you're thinking, "Don't say anything, Dad",

because I knew the danger.

You look at the average attendances,

United and Liverpool were becoming the best two supported teams in England.

With that came animosity.

We were the biggest team of the sixties, then we had no successor to Busby,

so the whole thing fell apart. And then you came in, you were already planning,

with Shankly, so to us there's got to be some resentment, hasn't there?

Shankly delivered the league title, the UEFA Cup and the FA Cup,

then he left.

United's demise, however, was confirmed four months earlier.