AT THE beginning of the week, Manchester United and Liverpool were preparing for Champions League matches against Atalanta and Atletico Madrid respectively.

But despite the importance of these games, attention was already turning to the meeting between the two sides at Old Trafford on Sunday.

It’s a game that is regularly viewed as one of the biggest rivalries in world football regardless of the current form or perceived stature of the two sides involved.

This is partly because its origins run much deeper than the game itself. It’s more than just a meeting between England’s two most successful football clubs even though that success certainly adds an extra edge.

In his pre-Atalanta press conference on Tuesday, United manager and former player Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was asked to respond to comments made by Bootle-born former Liverpool defender turned TV pundit Jamie Carragher.

There was plenty of praise for the United boss when Carragher spoke on Sky Sports’ Monday night show, but this was tempered with the lines:

“Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will not win a league title or Champions League trophy as Manchester United manager.

“He is not at the level of the other managers — in terms of Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel or Pep Guardiola.”

Solskjaer responded: ”I didn’t know what he was saying but of course we’ve got Liverpool on Sunday as well, so Jamie’s always looking at all these little things.

“As long as the club believes in me, I’m pretty sure Jamie Carragher’s opinion is not going to change that.”

And so it began. Liverpool manager Klopp was yet to speak about the game and the United manager was already responding to comments he believed were designed to ruffle him ahead of the big fixture.

Solskjaer could have brushed the question aside but decided to address the comments when told about them, which might be part of his attempts to bring back the kind of mentality that existed at the club under Alex Ferguson.

Ferguson was always aware (maybe even wary) of the rivalry and its roots. Liverpool’s success in the 1980s were the benchmark he set for his United sides, and Liverpool’s then 18 league titles were the target.

The Scotsman was in tune with the city of Manchester just as Klopp now is at Liverpool, and it’s no surprise that this embracing of the culture and history of the places, as well as the sport they are passionate about, contributed to the success both have had.

The history of this city rivalry they are able to draw upon is often said to have begun with the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, but though the great man-made waterway played a key role in the competition between Liverpool and Manchester, the rivalry had been brewing long before it opened.

Friedrich Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in Manchester between the years of 1842 and 1844 and commented on a growing canal network that would eventually connect Manchester to the Irish Sea. This saw the city’s early steps towards becoming an inland port and a challenger to Liverpool.

The Bridgewater Canal was originally constructed in 1761 to transport coal into Manchester from mines in the nearby town of Worsley, and by the end of the decade was extended as far as Runcorn where it connected to the Mersey estuary near Liverpool.

Railways were also beginning to connect the north’s industrial towns and, as Engels notes, “the first great one was opened from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830,” more than 60 years before the first boat sailed on the Ship Canal.

Research by the Manchester football historian Gary James relays a report from a Liverpool newspaper in 1860 which states that Liverpool as “the first port in the world” did not want to be outdone by Manchester — a “town of mechanics.”

The rivalry heated up when Manchester, then suffering during the long depression of the late 19th century, worked towards bypassing what it deemed unreasonable fees charged by the port of Liverpool and the railway.

The Manchester Ship Canal was the solution, and after it opened in 1894 the inland city of Manchester became a major port to rival Liverpool and London.

To put these years in a football perspective, Everton and Manchester United were both founded in 1878, Manchester City in 1880, and Liverpool FC in 1892 — just two years before the Ship Canal opened.

The importance of transport and trade in this rivalry is also evident in the United’s original full name: Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Football Club.

The football rivalry has since evolved from one with its roots in Lancashire’s global industries to one played out on a global scale itself, with both clubs now at the forefront of their cities’ commercial appeal as well as drawing from them.

The commercial competition between the cities remains alongside the sporting one, and many of the players who join these clubs are made aware of its history.

“When I came to England, they explained the rivalry between the two cities as well — about the canal,” former United defender Nemanja Vidic told the Independent in 2019.

“But sometimes you don’t even have to understand that. You go to the match and you feel the atmosphere in the stands — the energy from the fans. You know how important it is.”

And those fans will be back Sunday to witness this fixture live for the first time since January 2020, making their way to an Old Trafford stadium which is sandwiched between the railway and the Bridgewater Canal, and only the length of a football pitch away from the Ship Canal.

The history is all around it, and the rivalry it produced will only intensify in the build-up to kick-off.