In the distance I glimpse the Liverpool fans. They’re waving around balloons that make the number 30 – the kind you’d see at someone’s 30th birthday party. They’re less marking an anniversary than mocking one: 30 years since Everton last won a trophy. Meanwhile, Everton fans greet the Liverpool players with chants of “red-white shite, red-white shite, hello hello”. We’re away.
The game is an odd, sea-sawing affair. One where goals just happen, where teams concede when they look comfortable. The penny drops for me about ten minutes into the second half, at 1-1. Liverpool, thinking this is a football match, try to play intricate, refined passes. Everton, knowing this is a fight, clatter into every duel. Liverpool passes go astray, or more tellingly, fall short, looking unsure, rattled.
Everton’s James Tarkowski soaks up the adulation.Credit: AP
Goodison rises and rises, and I feel I’m watching Liverpool slowly crack. Now I see it. “It’s a bear pit”, I think to myself. Claws everywhere. Everything more proximate than is comfortable. This is a ground.
Would this be possible in a stadium, or would it look more like 1st v 16th? Before I can conclude, Liverpool score, again without much warning, and Goodison turns. Years of disillusionment and frustration come pouring out. The players are hopeless, the decision-making stupid. People start leaving. Then out of nowhere, in the 97th minute…
I’ll spend a lifetime trying to describe what comes next. Spectators run onto the pitch. One
takes out the corner flag and starts waving it above his head. Blue flares are let off. The noise in the Gwladys St End bounces off the roof, off the concrete, and smashes me in the face. It is like there is no other noise in the world. Men are crying and hugging with so much force they might just begin Goodison’s demolition early.
A player brawl broke out in wild scenes at Goodison Park.Credit: AP
Final whistle, 2-2. A draw salvaged when all hope was lost, and it’s like they just won the Champions League. Everton’s striker, Beto, is sprinting laps around the pitch, whacking the badge on his shirt. His fellow striker, Abdoulaye Doucouré, starts taunting the Liverpool fans,
and a melee breaks out in front of them. A spectator throws a full water bottle.
A scuffle breaks out between players in front of the Liverpool fans. Three red cards get handed out after the game, including to the Liverpool head coach who’s steaming at the referee. And amidst the maelstrom, the fans stay and sing and stay. The stands don’t empty. It’s not just rapture, it’s deeper than that: they’re saying goodbye. They will never have this again. Something serious is being lost.
Football clubs are nothing without continuity, story, place. Grounds matter because they distil that fact; because they show this is not a theatre of corporations or brands, but of blood and bone and sweat and devotion.
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Do Goodison’s rickety stands and steel pillars provide a great fan experience? Yes, but only by the most elemental, spiritual metrics. “So come on, come on, get down to Goodison Park,” they sang, basking. “Everton, we never shone so brightly”. Perhaps. And perhaps not again.
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