Liverpool v Manchester City histrionics are leaving nobody in any credit including Klopp and Guardiola

The Liverpool manager is taking legal action after comments made about him, but perhaps it’s time to step back and see how unedifying all this is.

Perhaps it was always inevitable that football’s increasing tendency towards trash talk would end here. If anything, the news that Jurgen Klopp is preparing legal action in relation to comments made surrounding the clash between Liverpool and Manchester City serves as a reminder of the extent to which the game lives in a parallel universe to the rest of us.

Somewhat predictably, reporting of this latest twist to this particularly tiresome tale has already been a little muddy. It doesn’t seem that Klopp is preparing to sue Manchester City, rather media outlets who repeated claims from the club that Klopp ‘had inflamed tensions ahead of the match’ and that the manager was ‘borderline xenophobic’ in his choice of words.

Defamation is a much-misunderstood word, a catch-all for the publication of a statement which has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to a reputation. For the purposes of litigation, this is broadly divided into two forms: libel, which relates to a defamatory publication which is permanent, including written material (books, newspaper and magazine articles, or material published online), as well as allegations appearing on the television or radio. It can also include publications which are relatively short-lived or fleeting, such as social media posts.

The considerably less common slander is more transient by nature, and is usually meant to refer to the spoken word.

There are four main defences available to a defendant in a libel or slander action – truth, honest opinion, publication on a matter of public interest and privilege – and the first two of these seem particularly relevant in this case. Truth is a complete defence to a claim of libel or slander, if it can be proved that the allegations published are substantially true. The burden for proving this rests with the publisher.

Honest opinion is a defence to a defamation claim if the publisher can show that what they published was presented as opinion rather than fact. The basis of that opinion has to be clear and it has to be an honest opinion that anybody could have held on the basis of available information (the so-called ‘man on the Clapham omnibus‘ test).

Do the comments aimed at the Liverpool manager meet the threshold for being actionable? Well, that would obviously be for a court to decide. A court may…