This North-West Derby.
It was still drawing plenty of attention back in England after all, this was the first Manchester derby against Liverpool since United's managerial change.
Even if it was only a friendly.
On the eve of the new Premier League season, the changes to the Red Devils' squad had become the central point of fan discussion.
After the disappointments of the previous season, the club had moved decisively. A rebuild aimed at restoring the Red Devils' former glory was now unfolding in full force this summer.
Moyes, who had managed the side previously, had stepped down in disgrace. United extended an olive branch to Van Gaal, who had just wrapped up his World Cup campaign.
The two sides had already signed the contract back in May.
The Dutch tactician had led the Netherlands to third place at the World Cup in Brazil, proving his managerial credentials with rigorous tactics and sharp in-game adjustments.
Not long after the World Cup concluded, he formally took up his post, taking the reins at United and shouldering the weight of reviving the Red Devils.
To fit Van Gaal's system, United showed an unprecedented level of investment this transfer window.
They launched into a full-blown spending spree, and every signing was a heavyweight.
Total expenditure comfortably broke the hundred-million-pound mark.
The club paid a staggering £59.7 million to sign Argentine star Di María from Real Madrid—a wing wizard with exceptional speed and technique, seen as United's great hope for revival.
Then, United paid £31.5 million to poach young defender Luke Shaw from Southampton, plugging the gap at left-back.
£29 million brought in Athletic Bilbao's midfield anchor Herrera, adding creativity and bite to the middle of the park.
£16 million secured Sporting Lisbon defender Rojo, and £14 million landed Ajax utility man Blind, further shoring up the back line.
On top of that, the club also brought in prolific striker Falcao on loan from Monaco, and signed young Vojvodina player Milinković.
In just one summer, United had assembled a swarm of star names, and the squad's depth had grown enormously.
And yet, in stark contrast to United's high-profile spending stood their fiercest rivals, Liverpool.
This transfer window, Liverpool had kept a low profile throughout. As of now, not a single new signing had been announced showing a sharp contrast to United's nine-figure expenditure.
David Dein seemed to be sitting on some big move, unwilling to act in haste.
On this point, Julien, however, wasn't worried at all. As captain of the French national team, he already had some inside information of his own.
For instance—Pogba was about to join Liverpool.
At the moment, Liverpool were only hashing out the fee with Juventus. He added that Griezmann wanted in too.
Julien had talked him out of it, though, it was better to go develop his game somewhere else. There might not even be a spot for him at Liverpool.
There was already a top-tier substitute ahead of him in that position: Coutinho.
As for the rest of the transfer business, none of it had been finalized yet.
Which was exactly why, heading into the International Champions Cup in the United States, Liverpool were still fielding much the same squad as the season before with no new arrivals, the lineup was barely different from the one that had won the Premier League.
Last season's championship-winning core remained fully intact.
Julien, Suárez, Coutinho, Gerrard, Henderson—all the key players had stayed. A squad tested on Premier League battlegrounds, bonded tight and ferocious in its fighting spirit, already had what it took to go toe-to-toe with any powerhouse.
For Liverpool, the absence of new-signing announcements didn't mean any drop in strength.
Time slipped by.
August 5th.
The International Champions Cup final kicked off on schedule at Sun Life Stadium in Miami.
If this North-West Derby between bitter rivals Liverpool and United had been played in England, it would without question have drawn the nation's complete attention. After all, this was the biggest derby in English football.
But here, in this American city, it failed to whip up the frenzy anyone had expected.
More than fifty thousand fans had packed into the stadium, yet the atmosphere still lacked that blood-pumping intensity of a European ground.
There was no deafening chorus of song, no waves of chanting rolling back and forth.
Compared to European stadiums, where fans sing without pause and cheer themselves hoarse, the atmosphere here fell short by more than a notch.
Anyone familiar with the US leg of the International Champions Cup knew the reason well enough—it wasn't that the tournament lacked appeal, but that American fans' attention leaned clearly in another direction.
Just two days earlier, the clash between Real Madrid and Manchester United had truly set American fans blazing. That match had drawn a crowd of more than 109,000, shattering the attendance record for a soccer match on American soil.
In American soccer culture, United and Real Madrid were unquestionably the biggest of the big names, each with an enormous fanbase. Liverpool, for all their weight in European football, simply didn't garnered the same pull in American fans' hearts as those two giants.
Even with the North-West Derby final now upon them, it still wasn't enough to stir American fans into true fever pitch.
Soon enough, six o'clock in the evening.
Peep!
With a blast of the referee's whistle, the North-West Derby final officially got underway.
Unlike Liverpool's earlier matches in the group stage, this time they fielded a full-strength lineup. Julien and Van Dijk, fresh off their holidays and back in form, were both restored to the starting eleven.
Suárez, Sterling, Gerrard, and the rest of the core players all took the field as well.
Klopp clearly wanted a win—a trophy to build momentum for the new season and to give something back to the Liverpool fans in the stands.
United, on the other hand, had racked up four straight wins in the tournament so far under Van Gaal, and their form looked hot on paper. But their underlying problems were about to be exposed on the biggest stage of the tour.
The 3-5-2 formation Van Gaal favoured depended, at its core, on a solid back three.
And in this match, the back three he fielded—Smalling, Evans, and Phil Jones—was clearly nowhere near the level he'd envisioned.
Their coordination looked unrehearsed, their covering runs a too slow, and defensively they looked thoroughly on the back foot.
In truth, ever since defensive stars like Ferdinand, Vidić, and Evra had left the club, United's entire defensive system had already crumbled.
Rebuilding the back line had become an urgent task for the club—more urgent, even, than reshuffling the attack.
Facing a Liverpool front line led by Julien, United's back three looked stretched to breaking point. Julien's pace and dribbling, Suárez's nose for goal—both kept battering away at the gaps in United's defence.
From the opening whistle, Liverpool held the initiative.
In the 11th minute, the deadlock was broken.
Julien picked up the ball on the left flank and, with a burst of astonishing pace, beat two United defenders in sequence. Shaking off their challenges, he spotted Suárez making a run into the box and delivered a perfectly weighted cross, putting the ball right at his feet.
Suárez didn't disappoint. He met it first time with a side-footed finish, and the ball nestled into the corner of the net, well beyond the goalkeeper's reach.
"Goal!"
The Liverpool fans in the stands erupted at once. Though few in number, their roar rang out clearly all the same.
1–0!
On the back of Julien's assist and Suárez's finish, Liverpool had taken the lead early.
And in that moment, United's defence had once again shown its fatal flaw.
On the touchline, Van Gaal's brow furrowed deep looking unhappy with his side's defending. From the very first minutes, this North-West Derby final had been tilting Liverpool's way.
Liverpool's players swarmed around Suárez in celebration, mobbing the scorer, shouting their celebrations at the top of their lungs.
Suárez laughed and returned the embrace, trading high-fives and hugs with his teammates, letting the joy of the goal pour out freely.
Peep!
The referee blew his whistle to restart play, and United quickly threw themselves back into the fight.
Rooney and Van Persie, the club's attacking spearheads, understood all too well the pressure of playing from behind, and threw everything they had into pulling the score back.
Rooney repeatedly took the ball in the final third and tried to drive forward, trying to inject some rhythm into the attack—even making long, desperate runs the length of the pitch but every time, Liverpool's defenders cut him off.
He was getting on a bit, after all.
The decline was severe.
Van Persie, meanwhile, kept darting through the box looking for a chance—one goal-mouth poach was cleared off the line by a desperate Van Dijk, and one long-range effort clipped the post and drifted wide.
The two of them gave everything they had, but still couldn't find a way through.
With Kanté and Van Dijk anchoring that central defensive line, it was rock solid!
From start to finish, the initiative never left Liverpool's hands.
United's attack looked disjointed without direction.
Liverpool, by contrast, kept their opponents firmly pinned back through slick, well-drilled combination play—especially the front three of Julien, Suárez, and Sterling.
In hot form, blending pace with technique, they battered away again and again at United's already fragile back line, running Smalling and company ragged, leaving them scrambling and helpless.
Whether it was Julien's incisive bursts forward, Suárez's nose for goal, or Sterling's darting runs down the flank—all of it left United's back three overstretched, unable to form any coherent defensive shape.
They had no choice but to drop midfielders and forwards back to help out defensively.
And with that, there was even less they could manage going forward.
In the 25th minute, Liverpool created another chance, the front three were combining to near-perfect effect.
Sterling picked up the ball on the right and quickly beat his man, then slid a pass inside to Suárez in the middle. Suárez feinted a shot, drawing the attention of two United defenders, then swept the ball across to the left, finding the onrushing Julien.
Julien took it in run and unleashed a fierce strike—the ball screamed goalward and buried itself in the net. United keeper De Gea got a hand to it, but there was nothing he could do.
Swish!
Goal!
The Liverpool fans in the stands roared again, louder than before.
2–0!
On the strength of Julien's goal, Liverpool extended their lead further.
Julien ran toward the touchline, arms flung wide, and let his teammates swallow him up in celebration.
On the sideline, Klopp clapped his hands together hard.
A performance like this filled him with anticipation for the season to come!
Van Gaal's brow, meanwhile, furrowed deeper. He turned slowly to his coaching staff, murmuring something under his breath, his tone was heavy with helplessness.
On the pitch, United's players looked visibly deflated, their morale taking a real hit.
As the match wore on, after Julien's second goal, Liverpool's momentum only grew more ferocious.
The entire match had well and truly fallen into their rhythm.
United, meanwhile, had been pushed completely onto the back foot, unable to raise any strong counterattack, left defending desperately in their own half, every trace of the old Red Devils' bite was gone.
Van Gaal stood on the touchline, his brow was never once unknitting, his face was gradually darkening by the minute.
He shouted instructions again and again, adjusting his tactics, trying to shift the balance of the game even waving for his players to push higher up but the chaos at the back meant nobody dared commit forward. They were left simply absorbing the pressure.
In that moment, his eyes were filled with nothing but helplessness. He understood all too well that this team, assembled at the cost of a hundred million pounds, was still nowhere close to functioning as a fighting unit.
The gaps at the back, the lack of understanding between players—these were all urgent problems waiting to be solved.
And this match, without question, had dealt him a sobering blow.
Taking on this mess at United—he wasn't even sure anymore whether it had been a good decision or a bad one.
In the 33rd minute, Gerrard picked up the ball in midfield and threaded a direct through-ball to Julien on the left.
Julien took it in pace, and facing Smalling's challenge, produced a slick change of direction to slip past him with ease. He then cut into the box, and with De Gea bearing down on him, calmly slotted the ball into the far corner. It hit the back of the net.
3–0!
A brace for Julien!
Liverpool had extended their advantage even further!
Julien ran toward the stands and made a celebratory gesture to the Liverpool fans. His teammates rushed over one after another and mobbed him.
Gerrard laughed and patted him on top of the head, while Suárez traded a high-five and an embrace with him.
On the touchline, Klopp's face was overflowing with delight, and he pumped his fist hard, letting the excitement in his chest pour out without restraint.
United's players, faced with a scene like this, could do nothing but shake their heads and sigh.
The drama of the match, though, wasn't over yet.
Liverpool's attack showed no sign of letting up.
The 41st minute.
Julien picked up the ball in the final third, drawing the attention of three United defenders. It looked as though he might shoot himself but instead, he suddenly slipped a diagonal pass across to the onrushing Gerrard.
Gerrard took the ball without a moment's hesitation and let fly from distance.
Boom!
The ball flew straight for goal and found the net cleanly.
4–0!
Before the half was even over, Liverpool had stretched their lead out to four goals.
This already counted as demolishing United outright!
At that moment, countless United fans back in England sat glued to their television screens, watching the final broadcast live.
The instant Gerrard's shot hit the net, every single United fan watching was left utterly stunned, disbelief was across every face.
They had gone into this expecting the club, under Van Gaal's leadership and armed with the summer's lavish spending, to stage a strong comeback season. Instead, facing a Liverpool side with not a single new signing, they'd been beaten so thoroughly they couldn't even put up a fight.
Four goals down at halftime—a defeat this humiliating was simply too much to accept.
Meanwhile, social media had already exploded, Liverpool fans were flooding the platforms with gleeful mockery, their mood was on pure celebration.
"Hahahahaha, I can't stop laughing! We haven't even announced a single new signing, and you're already flat on the ground?"
"United dropped a hundred million this summer, and this is what we get? This is it?"
"Van Gaal's barely been in the job five minutes—are people already screaming for him to get sacked? Talk about a miscarriage of justice for Moyes!"
"Julien was unreal—two goals and an assist, single-handedly wrecking United's back line!"
"Doesn't matter that we haven't signed anyone new—our Premier League championship core can steamroll you all the same!"
"So, satisfying! At this rate, defending the Premier League title is basically a done deal!"
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