Although his legacy is fundamentally sonorous, the Beatles also left behind a myriad of iconic imagesyes Perhaps one of the most remembered is the one captured by the Scottish photographer Iain Macmillan more than half a century ago. The Liverpool quartet was immortalized crossing abbey road in 1969, on the occasion of the cover of the album published the same year and which would bear the name of the famous pedestrian crossing in London.
Being tremendously popular the songs of John, Ringo, Paul and Georgeit might seem that music is the most genuine thing Liverpool has given us. And no. Because another crossing, but of paths, allowed At the end of the 19th century, one of the most important football rivalries in England was born.. A neighborhood derby emerged from mistrust. The maximum expression of ‘intimate enemies’.
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A CLUB FOR A STADIUM
Anfield was not born to be the home of Liverpool. Today’s feud ‘network’ was built for Everton, club founded in 1870 with the merger of the teams of the churches and chapels of the district. Although he had started his activity in a municipally owned field, stanley park, the entity grew in social mass, arousing the interest of an area, that of the English northwest, relatively backward in terms of football. A business opportunity hung over the politician’s head and brewer John Houlding.
‘king john‘ had risen from the city slums and had slowly entered the sports business, investing in cricket and bowling clubs. “His association with the sport was a way of gaining popularity,” reasons David Kennedy, PhD in political history of football in Merseyside. Become honorary president of Everton, he just had to wait for the right moment to act. that moment came in 1884.
The councilors of the club claimed it to provide financial security for the construction of a permanent headquarters. He sensed in the investment an opportunity to control a cultural asset of great value and projection. Anfield catapulted Everton into a powerhouse capable of competing with super teams of the time like Preston North End and Aston Villa. Also sneaked into the 12 founders of the Football League and in 1891, he would manage to win his first national championship.
But not all were smiles at the peak of success. Within the entity the first discrepancies arose. As a good businessman, Houlding wanted to control all the income. Anfield had grown to be among the venues with the most seats – 20,000 seats in the year of the league title – and some of his proposals, such as becoming the stadium’s only liquor vendor, caused tensions in the board.
“Houlding believed in a purely business vision of sports management, while other members of the council were committed to greater representation of the club,” Kennedy reasons. Mistrust turned to hostility. ‘King John’ ceased to be seen as a messiah. In 1892, with a faction of Liberal Party activists taking over the ‘toffee’ board, most members said enough was enough and decided to leave Anfield to build a new home, just a kilometer away, which they would call Goodison Park..
In the meantime, Houlding, also accused of taking political advantage of his position -on one occasion he asked the players to campaign for him-, he would be left without a position, without a club and with an empty stadium that all logic invited to tear down and build houses. But then he had a revelation: to found an entity with which to take revenge on his former partners and continue making the venue profitable; a club called Liverpool Football Club.
BLUE OR RED
Today it is enough to cross Stanley Park to go from Anfield to Goodison Park and vice versa. Never has such a short walk connected such distant realities. In the summer of 1970 the two clubs had the same leagues, seven. Since then, the imbalance has only increased, both in England and, above all, in Europe.
Despite Liverpool’s supremacy – even despite the fact that both properties are foreign – the rivalry remains intact. Since the birth of the Premier, Merseyside is the derby with the most red cards, a reflection of a polarized city. Families are divided between reds and blues, primary colors and sentiments, and, most importantly, no one loses: it is as true that Anfield is the temple of the ‘Reds’ as it is that the ‘Toffees’ celebrated their first title there.