The Fans Who Make Football: Liverpool FC | Featured Documentary

[Music] [Applause] [Music] that song has become an anthem of resilience for a football club and the city liverpool one of the poorest cities in all of europe ravaged by industrial decline and political isolation a city that ironically has had to stand alone at its very core is a football team and its fans some of the most committed supporters in the world being a football fan is not just for the saturday it's been a football fan for the weekend equally being a citizen isn't just for the week and not on a saturday being a citizen and a football fan all the way through here at its very roots we can discover what it truly means to be a liverpool fan i think this club stands for family hard work and dreams liverpool a city known across the world for a famous bird pop music the docks that once served an empire and a football club in the 1970s and 80s liverpool football club reigned supreme winning an incredible nine league titles but three decades have passed since that last victory for every liverpool fan 2020 is all about one thing winning the premier league [Applause] there's fans now go into the game we weren't even born last time we won the league we all know how liverpool have kind of come close before and it's kind of slipped through our fingers and all that i've been waiting my whole liverpool support in life to sit here and say that the pool are going to win the league and we're finally going to do it [Music] next please home baked in the shadows of liverpool's anfield stadium is a cooperative cafe it's owned by the community and is the embodiment of what it means to come from this city and your pie mashing gravy will come down the steps in a minute kathy alderson retired nurse and lifelong liverpool fan volunteers behind the counter on match days we know when they've scored as well because you can hear the roar it's brilliant to be so close to the ground and here's your clock there are actually two teams in liverpool the other being everton who play in blue hunger wears no club colours is the motto you don't have to be a red to be here we've got several blues behind me you you know but we we all believe in local people and keeping the money local if we possibly can reinvest in our own society that mildred one of our volunteers our eldest volunteer mildred do you support liverpool or everton oh everton oh sorry i asked now [Laughter] no no on match days outside the stadium there's a food bank project which also harnesses fan power as a lifelong liverpool supporter joe blott's mission is about more than just being a fan and while there's some great glories on the pitch here some really hard times being part of a football club is also being part of a community and why we do this why we do fun supporting food banks you know football fans can be a really powerful force for good that's the community spirit that we really believe in tonight a champions league match against atletico madrid could go either way but we've got the 12th man haven't we we've got the crowd behind them and i think the cop sometimes just sucks that ball into the goal when we're kicking up our end so let's hope unfortunately for liverpool despite dictating the match they lose and are knocked out of europe [Music] the result is a setback but for the fans the holy grail this season lies elsewhere [Applause] that's our sort of motto believe believe and we were picked at the post a couple of times recently and to get it this season fingers crossed nothing happens we'll be absolutely mega because i'm old enough to remember when we did win the league 18 times one of the many stars from that title-winning team was a young dane who was quickly adopted by the fans i look older than three on that picture i don't remember any of it unfortunately his home is a shrine to the glory days he enjoyed at anfield this one here is meant to be my last liverpool shirt ever in 1995 he played against coventry city we lost three two uh i scored so but that's meant to be that one we have another cup final here 1989 which is against everton the fans come up to you and tell you i love the 1986 f5 cup and i love the goal against matches but as well as the footballing highs and lows yan remembers the culture shock of first arriving from denmark i think it's fair to say that the city in many ways was on his knees what was keeping the city going was the spirit of the people and of course the liverpool football club they sort of pretty quickly let you know that i'm not actually doing them a favor by joining them they are doing a favor by allowing me to play liverpool football club and i think that goes all the way back to bill shankly when he announced that the football club belongs to the fans and we play for the fans since i come here to liverpool and to anfield [Music] i've drummed it into our players time and again that they are privileged to play for you [Music] and if they didn't believe me they believe me now [Applause] bill shankly ran the team for 15 years from 1959 to 1974 dragging the club from the second division to the very top of english football oh bill shankly was our greatest manager ever everybody loves shankly he instilled in them before they went out onto the pitch to say you're playing for them you're not playing for you and it's kind of a socialist approach in terms of the way he believed that working together you got the best outcome this is his ode to socialism shanklies toshacks keegan's fa cups and league titles the european cups to follow all built on a collective ethos of hard work and sacrifice his ideology was um everybody gets a share of everything you know everybody together i mean he really got liverpool as well [Music] liverpool in the 1960s felt like the center of the air in many ways you know you've got the music scene both football teams were doing well you know there's a lot going on simon hughes is a sports journalist and he's also written about the history and politics of the city you shifted forward 20 years into the 1980s and the city's status as a major port it declines rapidly in that period you've got to go back and understand the history of the city it was the second biggest port in the british empire the city was built on you know slavery and trade basically you know that was the that was the starting point of the city's wealth but the city's wealth was built at the expense of huge suffering a lot of the people working class people who worked on the docks were irish immigrants who grew up with a certain level of resentment for the british governments i'd say anti-establishments the city's decline began after the second world war as the british empire shrank every day people would go to the docks and not know whether they were going to be working the culture of casualization had a massive impact on the way people sort of felt you know they didn't have the standard framework which all the people in other parts of the country did have the docks was split in two like anywhere else in the city half liverpool half emerson fervent liverpool fan and former trade union activist tony nelson spent almost three decades working on the docks it wasn't unusual for men to go to watch everton one week in liverpool the other and i think there was more comradeship between the two anyone who says politics should be left after football you know doesn't know about football there's no about politics in this city it's not going to happen in the early 1980s the conservative government saw socialism in liverpool as a cancer that must be surgically removed before it could spread for the first time in british history politicians would try to bring a city and its population to their knees what liverpool needed was investments and help and instead what it got was margaret thatcher to those waiting with baited breath for that favorite media catchphrase the u-turn the ladies not for turning she just had it in for liverpool we know now that she told hesseltine to manage the decline of the city just let us fade away but i think she picked on the wrong city didn't she we're pretty much a socialist city you know we stand shoulder to shoulder look after each other margaret thatcher didn't uh nobody was that keen on her here the 1980s was the defending decades in liverpool's history as a city mass unemployment bigger than anywhere else in the country while the city struggled liverpool football club rose like a phoenix from the ashes a seemingly invincible team but it too would suffer a body blow the game was just six minutes old when a policeman drew the referee's attention to what was happening at the leoping's lane end of the ground i'd just come home from where somebody rang me up and said you'd turn the tv on one report says a gate was picked in another has claimed it was opened by staff at the ground on the 15th of april 1989 in an fa cup semi-final at the neutral ground liverpool fans were caught in europe's worst sporting catastrophe hillsborough and at the time i was a night sister on accident an emergency down at the royal about ten o'clock that night the walking wounded would manage to get themselves back from sheffield there was considerable confusion and much frightened anger the look in their eyes of having seen something terrible which obviously they had done and they were shocked and they were upset and they were saying it wasn't us we were we weren't pushing anybody the police wouldn't let us out so we knew from the start how bad it was in reality the police gave orders to open an extra gate allowing fans to flood into an already crowded stand in the resulting crush 96 people were killed people that appeal understood almost immediately they were getting set up by the establishment the media the police and politicians in the weeks that followed the same government whose policy was the managed decline of liverpool secretly asked the police to feed britain's best-selling newspaper the sun with false information people were blaming the fans and saying they pushed the gate down and they were crushing their own people and people believe what they read in the paper and we didn't feel at all supported at the time the whole city just came together whether that was about grief or whether that was about challenging the authorities and challenging the terrible things that have gone on in the court and the lack of public support through government in april 2016 after a 27-year fight for justice an inquest finally ruled that the supporters were unlawfully killed due to grossly negligent failures by police i believe all what was going on in the 80s manifested itself in the cover-up of hillsman because they believed football supporters in general and the people of liverpool they deserved what they got [Applause] even now more than three decades later no one has been punished for the events of that day hills was the basis for the politicization of a lot of younger people in liverpool now a lot of people say politics football don't mix i've never subscribed to that and very few people in liverpool do partly because of hillsborough you know you can't separate that event from politics i think that feeds in into you know into anfield on a matchday in liverpool politics even plays its part on the football pitch itself after scoring in a european match in 1997 star striker robbie fowler pulled up his top to reveal a message of support for striking dockers i'm proud of the fact that he did that i'm also proud of the fact that he was supporting liverpool dockers it was important to him as important to us that he was shown a solid dynasty but the fact that that he was one of the biggest names in in the premier league at the time any any scouts roots isn't it people would turn up outside anfield and i'll go where hey jan uh do me a favor on thursday the kids football team presentation and it wasn't can you do it it was you know and that was what was required of you and it's exactly the same when you have these disputes so the dog a dispute somebody would showing up at anfield or at melwood and they go hey yeah it's a t-shirt wear that for the lads yeah it's not i said can you do as a favor or whatever it's not listen because it's but this is what we do isn't it and you would never shy away from them managed political decline and industrial decay left liverpool alienated from the rest of the country in august 2019 that mood found a voice at wembley the home of english football you know the start of the season he had the boon of the national anthem and you know there's outrage amongst the rest of the country and i was like this is this has been coming for years this [Music] i think our scousers we're a bit special you know we're not going to have it we stand together we're in our english we're scouts so we've got more in common with dublin and glasgow and newcastle than we have with london so liverpool fans have always been defiant when two american venture capitalists who owned the club mismanaged the finances fans rose up against them [Music] all the things that shankly built up was being dismantled by corporate greed the fans won their battle in the high court effectively running the owners out of town [Applause] they'd saved the club for the next generation like teddy joe's six-year-old grandson but each generation of scousers has to make a choice between the red and the blue the great thing about this city is despite the rivalries um you know whole families are split down the middle reds and blues so it's not unusual to have a mix of liverpool and everton fans and we do have the friendliest derby because it is a family issue the first game i had to enjoy was never sing game because of my own covers an everton fan but luckily my dad made me see sense everything about this city is coloured by football the council even chose purple for their bins combining the red and the blue the football is is part of the beating house of liverpool [Music] darby day liverpool versus everton the city is divided it's the biggest game from a liverpool fan i don't like the derby i always worry you know that i want them to win so badly that i can't enjoy it with nine games to go liverpool need just six points and their 30-year title weight will be over surely nothing can stop them this time but in early 2020 the world turned red and for all the wrong reasons the whole world needs to take action you must stay at home the coronavirus threw everything into question christian just a final question do you think that the premier league season is going to be finished we have no idea let's hope so and with it liverpool's title charge there was even talk of cancelling the season altogether weeks became months but on the 17th of june the premiership was back on and so was the derby [Music] i've got lots of family and friends over everton fans so do i really want to rub it in sort of covering the match will be the anfield wrap a hugely popular podcast for liverpool fans all around the world lizzie doyle one of the producers is a die hard fan herself derby day is my favorite fiction of the whole year but it's also my most hated fiction of the whole year because the nerves and like the source of anticipation and like the almost anger that you get on darby day is unlike any other it's very much a pride thing in liverpool and on the whole we usually think that live people are gonna win and we just sort of predict how we think they're gonna win this will be a weird one because it's under lockdown there's no fans and it matters very very much to us this time because if we get a win here with that little step closer to getting the lead so it will be a sticky one to watch just watching the merseyside derby liverpool versus everton always a nerve-wracking experience i can't stand this but even more so tonight with so much at stake for liverpool then nil nil oh dear no real chances to talk about everton hit the post it was a mad game it was a very typical derby bloody goddesson probably still need two wins to secure the premier league crowd they've come agonizingly close in recent years only to fall at the last hurdle you know there's been me and mrs 2014 being the worst of that you know seeing gerard slipping over you know that was just the heartbreaking moment i'm 98 sure that they'll get it it's been a long time coming i can remember the days when we won the league and the joy of all that i wanted for the generations of liverpool fans who who've firsted for this and and seen just how good we were in in the 80s for me there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that liverpool will be champions this year and i can't believe i'm sitting here saying it around the city the excitement is building last night liverpool beat crystal palace if manchester city failed to beat chelsea tonight liverpool's 30-year wait will finally be over liverpool uses slogan saying this means more and when you watch liverpool lift our premier league trophy you will see why this means more to this football club the sort of unity that we have between each other i think because liverpool has always been the outsider we've always been outcasts to the rest of england that we've sort of like stuck together through the thick and thin i've been waiting for so long and i can't believe it's actually here come on come on come on yeah [Music] i feel absolutely amazing i can't believe it's actually happening we've done it 30 years we've done it brilliant for more than a generation this city has experienced ties lows and mere misses on the pitch as well as political battles and tragedies of it it's been a long time coming both it finally came now they can paint the town red the people of liverpool have hope in their hearts [Music] this one song written by rogers and hammerstein has carried the spirit of liverpool through triumph and disaster [Music] well you never walk alone my favorite song anyway it's a song that's been sung over the years by civil rights campaigners i always get choked to a degree when you sing about hope we all need hope in our life to get through the tragedies to get through the daily grind of being in one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the country it's our anthem you know and the words mean a lot [Applause] [Music] it's become a massive part of it four minutes before the game for everybody to give it everything they got and that makes us feel as though that we are that 12th man [Applause] [Music] the day liverpool were confirmed champions their points tally was 96. the same number as those who died at hillsborough

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 140,991

Keywords: youtube, aljazeera.com, al jazeera, united kingdom, aljazeera, aljazeera english, football, al jazeera english, liverpool, fans, aljazeera news, culture, aljazeera live, class, sport

Id: AzruxC5fr30

Length: 26min 5sec (1565 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021