The fireworks started prematurely, but then it had been a long time coming. Thirty years since the last league title if you’re counting in seasons; 15 tortuous weeks since this year’s Premier League was suspended, back in March, as Covid-19 swept across Europe and the shutters came down on life as we knew it.
Last night, without setting foot on a pitch, Liverpool FC finally became champions of England once again when the only club with a flickering hope of catching them, Manchester City, lost to Chelsea and saw that hope extinguished. It was a surreal moment on Merseyside.
Just after 10pm on a sweltering evening, cheers could be heard across the city as fans saw the title clinched from their living rooms. From the moment that Chelsea scored a penalty to go 2-1 up with 12 minutes left, the garden firework displays began and several thousand began to descend on Anfield for what the police described as largely “good-natured” celebrations.
There can be no more choruses of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the Kop choir this season, but fans outside the city centre’s bomb-damaged St Luke’s church gave it their best impromptu shot amid a cacophony of beeping car horns.
Yet it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The pubs that should have been spilling their punters onto the streets were shuttered; parades like last year’s spectacular Champions’ League homecoming will have to wait. Liverpool’s Assistant Chief Constable praised the “overwhelming majority” of fans who accepted that it was “not the time to gather” and the many who did stay at home, social distancing at this most social of moments, could have been forgiven for reflecting on how close it was to being different.
When the league was suspended, Liverpool were a remarkable 25 points clear at the top and just two wins away from sealing the deal. The parade was booked in for May 18th. The Reds had just been beaten by Atlético Madrid at Anfield; a game that cost them their chance of repeating 2019’s Champions League win and, according to one analysis, led to 41 extra UK deaths from the virus that was already ravaging Spain by the time 3000 Madrid fans boarded their planes for Merseyside.
In the intervening months, Liverpool has been particularly hard hit by Covid-19, with over 1,500 deaths in the city region and the city itself has the third highest fatality rate of any local authority. Nobody here would echo Bill Shankly’s famous quip about football being more important than life or death right now, but there have been some tortuous moments in recent weeks amid discussion of the season being declared void and fears that somehow even this dominant team were going to miss out.
Gareth Roberts, a presenter on the successful fan podcast The Anfield Wrap, started watching Liverpool in 1990, the season after the last title win. “I have been waiting and waiting,” he said. “There have been plenty of times when you think it is never coming.” By this March though, “everyone was planning the parties, booking days off, it was in the bag.” And then, for an agonising while, it wasn’t. For him, and many others, the relief of victory is now palpable.
“I’d be lying if I said this was how we had planned it,” he said. “I have heard so many stories about what people would do when Liverpool finally won the league. All of those plans have gone out of the window.” But for him and many others, “the big thing is getting the 30 years wait off our backs. The psychological weight for everyone who turns out to play for the club because the fans have been so desperate for three decades.”
Simon Hughes, an author and football writer for The Athletic whose book “There She Goes” charts the difficult history of the city during the years of Thatcher, Militant and the Toxteth riots, believes that this triumphant season might be the start of a new chapter.
“The last title was so closely entangled with Hillsborough the year before and with everything that had happened in the city in the 1980s,” he said. “It almost feels that now we can draw a line under that – not the fight for Hillsborough justice of course, but this is a new era, a new kind of win.”
Yet there are also some parallels with 1990. “I don’t think the city is in as bleak a place,” he said, “but we have had 10 years of austerity which have hit Liverpool hard. And then the pandemic. It does feel like Liverpool FC are on the march again just as the city is on the back foot again, because of everything that is going on. After Brexit, after Covid, it is going to be a struggle for Liverpool.”
Boost of confidence
There have been suggestions – not least from the city’s mayor Joe Anderson – that the pandemic might tip Liverpool over the financial cliff edge it was already on after ten years of austerity. Yesterday the council unveiled a £1.4bn recovery plan for the city, but that relies on £467m coming from a central government that has been criticised for under-funding the Covid-19 response of deprived places like Merseyside. “We are anxious about what the future holds,” Mr Anderson said, although even as an Evertonian he is clear that Liverpool’s Premiership victory will be both an economic and psychological tonic.
“We are working really hard to look at how we position ourselves post-Covid and the visitor economy is a massive driver for that,” he said. “The club is a brand that promotes the city of Liverpool across the world” and their title will be “a big boost of confidence because we know that Europe will be beckoning for them but also that the spotlight will be on the city”.
That spotlight might shine for a while. Such was Liverpool’s dominance in claiming their 19th title this year that the next one might come somewhat more quickly. That would mean a lot; a 20th win would bring Klopp’s team back level with arch-rivals Manchester United.
United’s rise to dominance coincided with Liverpool’s relative decline after the last league win in 1990, and watching Old Trafford stockpile the victories since then has added to the frustration on Merseyside.
The twentieth Liverpool title is for another day. So is the parade; Mayor Anderson has promised to ensure that the club and its fans get a “real celebration, some time in hopefully the near future”. For now, after waiting 1,149 matches across three decades, they will have to wait just a little bit longer.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2CCE5fe
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