News From Nowhere, November 2020
To step inside New Anfield is to realise just how well NESV – owners of Liverpool FC for ten years now – have been able to reconcile the two great opposing forces in association football: the relentless drive to the future, the tenacious hold of the past. No club in world football honours its own history more than Liverpool, as envious away fans queue up to testify. The past looms like an Alp in the collective imagination of the supporters – the cups, the legends, the triumphs and disasters. Yet, in the last ten years, no club has possessed a sharper cutting-edge when it comes to innovation – both on the field and off it. “The past looks after itself because millions of supporters tend its memory” says John W Henry. “The future, we plan for every day”.
This is true from the Boot Room, where manager Xabi Alonso masterminded last year’s 24th league title and the club’s second successive European Cup victory, to the board room where Henry and his team have absolutely grasped what Liverpool supporters told them on day one – ‘this is our club’ - and turned what might have been a deadweight idea into an astounding commercial advantage. Uniquely to English football the board contains two supporters’ representatives with full voting rights. “We found we couldn’t keep saying how much we honour and trust the fans and not back this up by giving them some power”, says Henry. “Nor can you keep that level of wisdom about Liverpool FC permanently on the outside. It doesn’t make sense. We needed it at the very centre of the club where decisions are made about the stadium, about ticketing and pricing, about fan welfare. Anything else was inefficient and we don’t do inefficient”.
And now the rest of English football looks on in envy. Liverpool has become the club where a seemingly endless procession of local talent finds its way into the first team and where the world’s greatest players long to join them. The youngsters are educated to play in the classical ‘Liverpool way’ from an early age; the established stars are chosen because they fit the mentality of the team and the culture of the club. “We don’t necessarily get the biggest names in world football. Often they cost too much anyway. But we do get the ones most appropriate for the aggressive, attack-based way we play”, says Alonso. “Footballers want to play in successful teams, for sure. But they also want to play in teams which value possession and put the accent on skill. They’re no different from other practising artists. They love to push their talents and to express themselves. We encourage that at Anfield. We also value long-term thinking which intelligent players always appreciate. A few high-profile stars like being gypsies, constantly on the move. But increasingly we have found that the best players in the world want to be one or two-club men – like Steven Gerrard or Paulo Maldini or Ian Callaghan”.
It’s not just the trophies which attract players to Liverpool of course. It’s the whole Liverpool FC experience. Walking past the beautiful memorials to Hillsborough and Heysel to the imposing entrance of the New Anfield grandstand, the visitor is already primed for an experience beyond the run-of-the-mill. There’s no talk of ‘brands’ here, or ‘franchises’. New Anfield is New Anfield, not the Barcap Soccerdome as Old Trafford became two years ago, or The Tesco Soccerama-Experience as Evertonians must now call their home-ground on the outskirts of Ormskirk. Even the famous red Liverpool shirt – which carries the name of ‘Medecines Sans Frontiers’ – is testament to the enduring class of the club. True enough, the club has not been shy in developing a commercial empire in the Far East and – more surprisingly – North America, but the culture of capitalism is refreshingly absent from the New Anfield stadium itself. The place is a temple to football. Nothing else. A cynic might say that this, itself, is a ‘brand’ and a ‘mission statement’. Henry says “Let them. We know what we’ve built in Stanley Park, and it’s unique”.
It certainly is. As you walk under the venerable ‘This is Anfield’ sign – removed from the old ground when the wrecking crews came in and given pride of place in the players’ tunnel for the opening of the new arena in August 2014 – you emerge into the most famous football stadium in the world. On the left and in front of you the vast double-deckers rear up and fill the sky. No giant tv screens exist inside New Anfield – the supporters’ reps on the board put the kibosh on that. “We felt that it encouraged people to gawp at replays of a near-miss just at the moment when supporters normally upped the volume and drove the team on to make amends”, says one of them, Fat Scouser. John Henry listened, as he did over the 39th game which was dropped like a hot tatty.
And on the right, as you emerge from the tunnel, is the mighty sweep of the new single–tier Spion Kop with its astonishing acoustics and famously cheap seats and unreserved sections. Asked why it contains 29,000 seats Henry says “We wanted to beat the old record, but not smash it”. And then the grandstand itself, a thrilling combination of high-tec and traditional – an immediate design classic on its unveiling, gesturing back to the old Archibald Leith stand that once graced Anfield between the wars and up until the 1960s. “We hated the idea of building an identikit stadium with no individual personality” says Henry. “British football stadiums were always different to the rest of the world, and we made sure to incorporate some of that character into New Anfield. From day one, this place seemed like home”. “And we still haven’t lost here” adds Alonso.
Naturally the place is full every other week. But why wouldn’t it be? The quality of football Liverpool have been serving up for the past 8 years has been out of this world. “Every player is capable of beating a man” says club captain Pepe Reina -poised this season to match Phil Neal as the club’s most-ever decorated player. “The emphasis is on attacking from the back, speed, collective endeavour, helping each other out, no exceptions. Socialism if you like. Maybe we over-relied on effort and not enough skill when I first came to Liverpool. Now a player has to have both or they aren’t a Liverpool player”. The youth teams, the reserves all play according to the devastating formula. “The average size of the team has probably gone down a bit”, admits Reina, “but we learned that size does not necessarily equal power. It affected the way we chose and developed kids and it had a knock-on effect at first team level. We’ve corrected that. It was a marvellous advantage to have that knowledge first”. Dani Pacheco, now in his 13th season at Liverpool, was a pioneer. “People said I was too small for the Premier League”, he remembers, “and they couldn’t believe it when I knocked Dirk Kuyt out of the team”. “Looking back on it now that was the turning point” acknowledges Reina. “It helped that he scored a hattrick against the Mancs I suppose”.
As the club prepares to open its doors to the city for the 31st anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, the club and the fans have much to be happy about. “Justice has been done at last – a big thanks to Andy Burnham and the new Labour government for that - and this may be the last time we gather in such vast numbers for the commemoration”, says general manager Sir Kenny Dalglish. “But of course we shall never forget. That would be impossible”.
But what next for this great club? What else is there after this? “One day I won’t be here, at least not as the coach and manager”, says Alonso reflectively. “But it’s important the succession goes well and we continue to be at the forefront of innovation. The game is changing quickly. It always does and therefore we should be prepared”. His face betrays an uncharacteristic anguish. “Look at what happened to Man Utd once Ferguson went. They collapsed. Maybe that had something to do with the extraordinary events surrounding his dismissal, the arrest and the trial and what not. But the fact is their club hadn’t thought about what happened next, even though they’d had 20 years to prepare. Now they are playing Oldham on Saturday and we are preparing for the Barcelona game. That’s tough. ”
