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Thoughts on Success of Major Merseyside Clubs and Keeping it Local
Of all the glorious imagery that came out of Liverpool FC’s Champions League Final victory, perhaps those that featured Trent Alexander-Arnold were the most resonating. In one image, widely shared on social media, player sat solemnly in the tunnel post-match, socks pulled down, his posture and the lighting make him look more child-like than his 20 years. He was staring at his Champions League medal with wonder, in the way any of us would do the same. As he put it himself in a Twitter post, “Just a normal lad from Liverpool whose dream has come true.”
Big clubs, of course, don’t always make dreams come true for local players. There might be the odd exception with the likes of Alexander-Arnold and Everton’s Tom Davies, but, if you support a big club, your star striker is more likely to be born in Buenos Aires than Bootle. Even in the lower reaches, as with, for example, Salford City FC, the roots of a club can quickly disappear.
Liverpool will spend
That, of course, is the reality of modern professional football. There will never again be a story like the Celtic’s Lisbon Lions of 1967, who were all born within 30 miles of Celtic Park. Even Manchester United’s Class of 92 seems like a relic of a bygone age. Yet, we saw the unbridled joy that Liverpool’s Champions League victory brought to the city. There is a feeling that the likes of Jurgen Klopp understands the fabric of the city, its people, and not just the football club.
We should also bear in mind the pressure there is to deliver results. According to the major betting sites listed at Freebets.com, the UK online bookmakers, Liverpool are not favourites for any competition next season: In the Premier League, they are 5/2, lagging behind Man City at 8/11. In the Champions League, they are 7/1, lagging behind City at 5/1 and Barcelona at 6/1. In the FA Cup, they are 5/1 compared to City’s 10/3 (all odds taken from Bet365). The point is that Liverpool will likely spend in order to renew their challenge, and they are likely to look beyond the local area when they do so.
Local economy impacted by success
But before we rush to judge and deem what we see on the pitch as supporters of COLFC as a purer version of Liverpool football, we should also take into consideration what sustained success means to the community. The Main Stand development in 2016 at Anfield was said to have created around 1,000 jobs for the local area. There are similar expectations for the Anfield Road stand. There are also unquantifiable benefits – how much, for example, was the Champions League parade that brought 750,000 people out on to the streets worth to the local economy?
In the end, one could argue that it is all about creating a balance. “Keeping it local” is not about the exclusion of players of other countries, nor is it about searching for idealised version of what a team should look like. The project of COLFC has shown that a football club can be built through the roots of a local community. The bigger clubs in the area have transformed to be something more than a local club, but they haven’t forgotten what it means to be part of the Liverpool community. If you look back at the images of young Trent Alexander-Arnold on winning the Champions League with the club he has been involved with since he was 6 years old, you will probably agree with that.
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