Yet while this is one of the more intense rivalries in MLS and the importance of those local bragging rights can't be overstated, it's also true to say that this year both teams will also have an eye on the bigger league-wide picture.
In fact, a long-standing intramural competition between them has recently grown, if anything, more intense, thanks partly to a simmering rivalry between Ann Godoff, president of the division colloquially known as "Little Random," and Sonny Mehta, president of the Knopf Publishing Group.
Everyone knows the intense rivalry will become more intense.
The rivalry's probably more intense among the younger fans who don't remember those days".
But their decades-long relationship has more often been defined by an intense rivalry in private — a predictable tension, perhaps, for two figures who have long imagined themselves in the nation's top job.
The Yankees and the Boston Red Sox are already salivating over the prospect of landing Johnson, and their efforts to acquire him will surely add still one more wrinkle to their ongoing, and intense, rivalry.
[Laughter] The storied rivalry between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson seems more intense among their fans than between the players.
So the spiral spun, the century-old rivalry seemingly more bitter, more intense than ever before.
"We said that this league will be very tight and, with two Sheffield clubs in the same position, there was always going to be that rivalry and it's more intense than it normally would be.
