Why it's a crying shame that Everton and Liverpool are turning Merseyside into a football wasteland

By Michael Calvin

Published 23:00 28/11/09

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The first grown man I saw cry was a Liverpool fan.

It was February 21, 1970. Bill Shankly’s first great team had lost 1-0 to Third Division Watford in the FA Cup quarter final.

I was a ballboy, in a washed-out bottle green tracksuit that itched like a penitent’s hair shirt.

He wore a red and white scarf, studded with pin badges, over a donkey jacket.

His tears, as he sagged into a wire fence alongside the wooden hut that housed the Supporters’ Club, are a freeze-frame image of my childhood. 

They remind me of the pain generated by passion, the bitterness of a betrayal of faith.

They tell me football on Merseyside is still the crying game.

Today’s 212th Liverpool derby is bottom of the bill, behind Chelsea’s visit to the Emirates and El Gran Clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid.

It won’t feel like it, of course. Defiance is a local speciality and Goodison, like Anfield, is a wonderfully evocative arena.

The anthems will soar, the tackles will fly and a city will be united across a fabled sporting divide.

But then reality will take hold.

Everton, like Spandau Ballet, are an Eighties tribute act. Like Liverpool, they are potential victims of the Woolworths effect. The clubs have enviable customer bases but are trapped by tradition. Lack of foresight means they’ve failed to move with the times

Loyalty has its limitations, and they cannot continue to rely on prisoners of conscience.

No one could deny David Moyes the right to stop banging his head against the glass ceiling of Everton’s financial limitations.

He needs to move soon to the big job which will define his managerial career. Otherwise he will be tainted as the nearly man of his trade.

Similarly, Steve Gerrard must fear he is slowly morphing into a modern version of Matthew Le Tissier.

Gerrard is the ultimate local hero, who defines his home city and the club to which he has given his professional life.

Lesser characters would have cashed in, walked away after that legendary Champions League Final in Istanbul.

They would have trotted out the usual excuses about the need for new challenges.

It’s difficult to envisage Gerrard joining another English club, but I can see him resuming his partnership with Xabi Alonso in the virgin white of Real Madrid.

That heresy will enrage the cyber warriors, who consider they have a monopoly on the truth.

But, without wishing to appear patronising, real football fans on Merseyside are fair minded. They have an intelligent appreciation of the game, an understanding of its realities.

Reds are not taken in by fairy tales which suggest the Europa League trophy – whatever that looks like – will become a fitting family heirloom.

Blues are largely sympathetic to Bill Kenwright, a well-meaning chairman who has run out of money and hope.

It’s easy for me, as an outsider, to highlight the absurdity of rejecting the chance to share a stadium in Stanley Park.

People care too much, just like that fan who, long ago, unwittingly taught me the consequences of failure in football.

That defeat, on a moonscape pitch at Vicarage Road, prompted Shankly to break up the team and plan for the future.

He, Bob Paisley and Kenny Dalglish created a dynasty which has lost its sense of direction.

Everton’s last trophy was the FA Cup in 1995. Liverpool’s wait for a League title will extend to 20 years, at least.

In another two decades, Merseyside may be a football wasteland.

That prospect may evoke bitter laughter along the M62, but it should be enough to make the rest of us weep.

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