“Anfield is not the same anymore,” commentary legend Clive Tyldesley wrote on Substack in March, because “our relationship with our football heroes has changed…It’s now up to them to give us something to get excited about.”
But when I asked Liverpool fan and prodigious observer of the game Laurence McKenna whether he agreed with that diagnosis, he offered a different one: It’s not the tourist fans making their pilgrimage to Anfield who’ve dented the famous atmosphere, and it’s not necessarily some growing sense among those in attendance that they’ll cheer when they’re entertained. It’s the ticket resale platforms, Laurence said, who are all too willing to fill up the home sections with away fans and change the makeup of the collective Anfield organism.
For more on the deep history and changing dynamics of Liverpool’s famous stadium, check our Cathedrals feature:
Has Anfield Lost Its Formidable Atmosphere?
The songs came rolling down the Kop in waves, the ones you can make out through the television — “Li-VER-pool, Li-VER-pool” — and others with distinct verses of their own, winding tales that tell the story of what it means to follow one of Europe’s great clubs from a city in the North West of England that thinks of itself as a place apart.
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