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Anfield: Difference between revisions

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This article is about the football stadium. For the district, see Anfield, Liverpool.

Anfield

View from Anfield Road Stand
Full name	Anfield Stadium
Location	Liverpool, England
Owner	Liverpool F.C.
Operator	Liverpool F.C.
Capacity	45,522
Field size	110 x 75 m
Surface	Grass
Construction
Built	1884
Opened	September 1884
Construction cost	£555,098
Tenants
Liverpool FC

Anfield (sometimes known as Anfield Road) is a football stadium in the district of Anfield, in Liverpool, England. An UEFA 4-star rated stadium, it is the home of Liverpool F.C - England's and UK's most successful club, having won the league championship 18 times and the European Champions League a total of 5 times.

Stadium features

It was the unflagging passion of Liverpool's noisy fans that earned Fortress Anfield its reputation as the most daunting ground for visiting teams. Appropriately, Anfield's incessant barrage of melodious singing and uproarious chanting - familiar enough now, but virtually unknown elsewhere at the time - quickly caught-on in Britain after fascinated TV sports cameramen began focussing on the antics of the Anfield fans in the early 1960s. Manager Bill Shankly, who engineered the club's dominance of English football in the 1970s and 80s, had a sign proclaiming "This Is Anfield"^[1][2]mounted on the wall above the exit from the players tunnel, which was "to remind our players who they're playing for, and remind the opposition who they're playing against". Many of the Liverpool players reach up and touch the sign as they pass underneath it for good luck.

Nationally most prominent during the 1970s and 80s but already engrained in Liverpool tradition, Anfield's legendary 'Boot Room' was an alcove where match strategies were planned. While outside the old stadium stands the famous "Shankly Gate" with the immortal words: "You'll Never Walk Alone" inscribed upon it.

Rising behind the goal at one end of the ground is a vast stepped terrace, the Spion Kop, (named after a Zulu hill in South Africa) - where, every 'home game,' more than 25,000 fans regularly heaved in vibrant support of 'The Reds,' as the Liverpool team are also known. Back in the days when sixpence was very hard to find in Liverpool, a small enclosure, or mini-Kop, in the top right hand corner of these towering terraces, was called the Boys Pen, where young Scousers - in safe segregated protection from crushing - graduated to the main Kop. Supporters on 'The Kop' are also world famous for their singing of the song 'You'll Never Walk Alone' - an adaptation of a hymn made excessively popular in the 1960s by Gerry & The Pacemakers - (just one of many Liverpool musical bands contemporary with the rise of The Beatles) This song is always played and sung with great gusto as Liverpool run out onto the turf at Anfield.

Thanks to the legendary noise and enthusiastic support of its generations of fans - having inspired 'The Reds,' to countless historic winning performances down the years - Anfield stadium in general and The Kop in particular are still widely and very frequently referred to, especially by the British sporting Press, as *Liverpool's "12th Man". (There being *eleven soccer players per side in Association Football)

History

In1882 Everton F.C. were forced to find an enclosed ground for their matches due to rent problems - previously they had played on the public pitches in Stanley Park. At a meeting conducted in the Sandon Hotel in Everton they managed to rent a field off Priory Road. However, two years later the owner asked them to leave and John Houlding (a Liverpool brewer) helped them secure a pitch from fellow brewer John Orrell at Anfield Road adjacent to Stanley Park. The first game was played on 28 September 1884 when Everton beat Earlstown 5-0.

Anfield is famous for attracting fans from all corners of the UK and indeed the World. It is thought that the majority of Liverpool's fan base who make up the attendance at Anfield each week is made up of people from outside the boundaries of the city of Liverpool.

Over the ensuing eight years Houlding poured money into the club and improved the facilities with purpose-built stands. Attendances topped 8000 and in 1888 Everton became founder members of the Football League. Houlding became more proprietorial and insisted that the club use his hotel for changing before and after games; he also increased the rate of interest on his loan to the club. John Orrell threatened to withdraw the tenancy of Anfield Road in 1891 unless certain alterations were undertaken.

At a further meeting on 15 March 1892 Houlding was outvoted and the club decided to leave. A building fund was immediately set up and £1,517 pounds raised to purchase a new ground. The chosen location was Goodison Park on the north side of Stanley Park, Liverpool, less than a mile away, and was purchased for £8,000.

Stands

Liverpool proceeded quickly to develop Anfield. The first stage was the provision of a significant Main Stand, completed in 1895 with a highly distinctive half-timbered gable that proved a landmark in English football until its demolition in the early 1970s to make way for the current Main Stand.

In1906, Liverpool and Preston North End formally renamed the banked stand at one end of their ground Spion Kop, after a hill in Natal that was the site of a battle in the Second Boer War, where the British forces suffered heavy losses (many of the fallen were Scousers in the Lancashire Regiment). Many other football grounds, such as Blackpool FC (Bloomfield Road), St Andrews, Birmingham and Hillsborough, Sheffield, adopted the name of "Kop" for one of their stands. However, contary to popular belief, Arsenal F.C.'s Manor Ground was the first to have a Spion Kop.

At its peak, the stand could hold 30,000 spectators, and was one of the largest single tier stands in the world. Local folklore claimed that the fans in the Kop could "suck the ball into the goal" if Liverpool were playing towards that end - and on most occasions, Liverpool play the second half of the game towards the Kop. Licensed capacity was lowered to just under 22,000 with the Safety of Sports Grounds Act in 1975, and the limit was lowered again due to safety measures brought in following the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Finally the Kop was completely rebuilt as an all seater stand in 1994, although the new Kop like the old one is a single tier. The current capacity is 12,409.

The giant flagpole found at Kop End was the top mast from the SS Great Eastern, one of the first ever iron ships. The club came by it when they were looking for a flagpole, and with the ship being broken up at nearby Rock Ferry, they decided to purchase it ^[3]

The other stands are:

• Main Stand - rebuilt in 1973 and more or less unchanged to the present day, with a capacity of 12,277.

• Centenary Stand - originally known as the Kemlyn Road Stand. This stand was built in 1963 and it used to have seating for 6600 fans. In the late 1970's-early 1980's, the club started to buy all the houses on Kemlyn Road with the aim of demolishing all of them so that the existing stand could be expanded. The club had bought nearly all the houses in the street by 1981 but the planned expansion had to be delayed for nearly a decade because Joan and Nora Mason refused to move out of their home until finally accepting a settlement in 1990. The development was then started which saw all of the houses in Kemlyn Road demolished and the address becoming non-existent. A second tier was added to the stand which gave it a capacity of 11,762. The new stand was opened for the club's centenary in 1992. It is now known as the Centenary Stand.

• Anfield Road Stand - rebuilt in 1998, with a capacity of 9,074, including the away fans section. The Away fans are located on the lower tier, where just under 2,000 seats are available. This stand is also shared with home supporters, some of whom will be sitting in the small seated tier above the away fans.

The ground incorporates several notable features, including a memorial to the 96 fans who died in the Hillsborough disaster. There is a statue of Bill Shankly^[4], as well as a pair of gates at two entrances to the stadium, the Shankly Gates ^[5] and Paisley Gates ^[6], named after Shankly and his successor Bob Paisley. Floodlights were installed in 1957, and first used in a game against Everton.

Difficulties of expanding

Due to the difficulties of expanding Anfield beyond its current boundaries (an entire terraced street had to be demolished to make way for the Centenary Stand expansion), Liverpool are expected to leave the ground in the next few years. The plans, originally approved in February 2005, needed to go before Liverpool City Council for a second time some 12 months later to ensure that the proposed stadium complied with new planning regulations. It was reported on 11 April 2006 that the plans had passed without amendment. The club now looks for George N. Gillett Jr. and Tom Hicks to help fund the £160m, 60,000 all-seater stadium, after agreeing the taking over from soon-to-be former chairman David Moores. Work is to start in April 2007.

In the early stages, there had been suggestions for the new stadium to be shared with local rivals Everton F.C. but this was ruled out by Liverpool's Board of Directors in 2005.

The earliest date that Liverpool could occupy their new home is said to be August 2009.

The original plan, announced in December 2000, had been for a 70,000-seat stadium to be ready for August 2004. But the plans were re-written 18 months later after the club's directors decided that the 70,000-seat plan would have been too costly. If the relocation goes ahead, Liverpool will demolish all four stands of the existing Anfield ground but retain the pitch as a garden of remembrance, as so many deceased fans have had their ashes scattered on the Anfield pitch - including some of the Hillsborough victims.

Attendance

Records

Record Attendance: 61,905 v Wolverhampton Wanderers, February 2, 1952 (FA Cup 4th Round)

Average attendances (Premier League)

• 1999-00: 45,852
• 2000-01: 43,698
• 2001-02: 43,389
• 2002-03: 43,243
• 2003-04: 42,706
• 2004-05: 42,587
• 2005-06: 44,236

International matches

A number of international matches have been played at Anfield, including some that were nominally "home" matches for Wales. The ground also hosted four matches in the Euro 96 finals. The latest international match to be hosted at Anfield, in 2006, took place on 1 March. This was a friendly between England and Uruguay which England won 2-1.

References

External links

• My Anfield - Collection of fans' memories
• Virtual tour at official Liverpool FC site

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53°25′50.95″N 2°57′38.98″W / 53.4308194°N 2.9608278°W / 53.4308194; -2.9608278