Saturday afternoon in Liverpool had shaken off the run of grey that had hung over the city for days—sunlight, rare and overdue, broke through the clouds and spilled across Anfield, in the city’s northeast.
It felt almost like an omen for today’s match, as if Liverpool might finally walk out of the losing streak that had shadowed them lately.
Anfield stadium, standing on this ground, sat quiet and still, having weathered a century’s worth of storms as an irreplaceable holy site, in the hearts of every Liverpool supporter.
Dean and Ethan walked into that holy site together, carrying a mix of nerves and anticipation.
Neither of them had ever watched a match in person before.
Both of them were brimming with excitement.
Both of them were desperate for today’s game to start.
Dean kept studying Anfield as they went.
The two of them had done their homework on the ground beforehand.
The Anfield of today was nothing like the modest ground it had started out as, and yet it had somehow held on to the purest possible look of an old-fashioned English football ground.
The name itself was simple and direct, taken straight from the Anfield district it stood in—this stretch of land and the stadium had long since become one and the same.
Plenty of grounds across Europe followed the same pattern.
San Siro in Milan, for example.
Looking at Anfield, Dean found Heighway’s words echoing in his head, again and again.
One day, you’ll really be standing out there on that pitch yourself.
Dean thought back to what he’d read the night before.
It turned out this holy ground of the Reds hadn’t originally belonged to Liverpool at all.
When Anfield stadium was first built, it had been Everton Football Club’s home ground.
A man named John Houlding had owned the ground.
In 1892, he’d suddenly raised the rent by a huge margin, negotiations between the two sides completely collapsed, and with no other choice, Everton had to leave Anfield behind and move to what is now Goodison Park.
That very same year, Houlding had turned around and founded a brand-new club on the site Anfield now stood on: Liverpool Football Club.
From that point on, the matter was settled for good.
Anfield became Liverpool’s permanent home ground.
And it had held that role for a hundred years since.
Bearing witness to every storm the club weathered, from its birth to its rise.
Bearing witness, too, to every match those extraordinary talents played here, wearing the red of the Reds.
Sam Raybould.
Gordon Hodgson.
Billy Liddell.
Kenny Dalglish.
Steven Gerrard…
One generation after another, carrying Liverpool forward.
Dean and Ethan followed the crowd in through the gates.
The very first thing they saw was the ground’s most famous stand of all: the Kop.
The name traced back to 1900, during the Second Boer War, to the Battle of Spion Kop in South Africa, where a huge number of local Liverpool soldiers had died, buried far from home.
Dean still remembered from history class that Winston Churchill had served as a messenger during that very battle.
Whatever the case, in memory of that battle, when Liverpool built a new stand in 1906, they named it the Spion Kop.
Blackpool’s Bloomfield Road, Birmingham City’s St Andrew’s, Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough—all of them chose to use the name “Kop” for one of their own stands.
Even so, Liverpool’s Kop became the most famous of them all.
It grew into Anfield’s loudest calling card, and the exclusive totem of Liverpool’s most devoted supporters.
The only shame was, the two tickets Heighway had given them weren’t for the legendary Kop, but for the Centenary Stand, on the opposite side of the ground.
The Centenary Stand had its own history behind the name, just as rich in its own right.
This stretch of ground had originally been Kemlyn Road, running alongside the stadium.
In 1981, Liverpool Football Club formally bought up the entire street, spent several years planning and redeveloping it, began construction on a new double-tiered stand in 1990, and finally completed it in 1992.
The timing happened to coincide with the club’s centenary celebrations, so this brand-new double-decker stand was formally named the Centenary Stand.
The two brothers looked around as they searched for their seats.
Looking out across the whole ground, the single most electric, most feverish sight remained the Kop.
As the most famous supporters’ stand in the whole of England, the Kop was where Liverpool’s most loyal, die-hard fans gathered, carrying the single most intense atmosphere anywhere in the stadium.
In the early years, the Kop had been a purely standing terrace with no seats, no dividers, and tens of thousands of fans packed shoulder to shoulder, singing as one, the sound shaking the entire ground.
The sight of it must have been overwhelming.
Later, after English football was struck, one after another, by the Heysel disaster and the Hillsborough disaster, the Football Association introduced strict new rules to eliminate safety hazards and bring proper order to stadiums: starting in 1994, every ground had to convert to all-seater stands.
But rules could change the shape of a stand.
They couldn’t wear away the love Liverpool’s supporters carried in their bones.
Even with the all-seated layout, at every single home match, the die-hard supporters still stood the entire way through, never once taking their seats.
Tens of thousands of figures in red, packed row upon row across the stand, the singing never letting up for a moment.
The melody of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” rang out again and again over Anfield, burning, wholehearted, immense.
Ethan felt like every drop of blood in his body was boiling.
He was finally seeing, with his own eyes, the Anfield he’d read about in the papers, countless times—the legendary stand that never went quiet, the burning heart of everything Liverpool believed in.
Dean stood beside his brother, looking out at the roaring crowd in front of him, listening to the singing and shouting rising and falling all around.
In this moment, he truly understood, for the first time, the weight this place carried, understood the deep roots behind a hundred years of Liverpool never fading, and understood, too, the love Ethan had held onto for so many years.
Standing in the middle of a scene like this, he felt his own breathing quicken, just slightly.
“So, this is what it’s like, watching live,” Dean murmured to himself.
But, the loudest of it all was still to come.
The instant the players walked out onto the pitch, the whole of Anfield seemed to go off like a lit powder keg with an overwhelming roar exploded all at once, sweeping across the entire ground.
An ear-splitting wave of sound crashed over them, carrying the raw fever of tens of thousands of supporters, slamming hard into every single corner of the stand.
Dean sat in his seat in the Centenary Stand, caught off guard, his ears were ringing with the force of it.
This was the first time he’d felt, in person, the sheer intensity of a top Premier League home crowd.
Anfield’s fever was thousands of hearts roaring as one, the belief ran through every drop of red blood in this place, thundering all at once.
Looking out, a sea of red rose to its feet all at once, every arm was raised high, every voice was chanting in synchronized unison.
“Gerrard!!”
“Steven Gerrard!!”
Beside him, Ethan had already gone completely wild, shouting hoarse right along with the whole crowd, his eyes lit up with an almost frightening brightness, it looked like pure fever was running through him.
Dean saw the man the whole of Liverpool was worshipping, too.
Steven Gerrard.
Liverpool’s captain, Anfield’s flagbearer, an irreplaceable article of faith in the heart of every Red supporter alive.
Heighway’s tickets had them seated well, close to the pitch.
Dean could see everything with full clarity. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Beside Gerrard stood Xabi Alonso, Riise, Hyypiä, Reina…
names he’d only ever seen printed in newspapers, standing right there in front of him in real.
No longer just as cold text and photographs.
The roaring from the crowd never once let up, the fever was hanging abundantly in every inch of air.
Worked up and buzzing, Ethan turned toward him, pressing his mouth close to Dean’s ear against the noise, rattling off commentary without pause.
“Dean, look!
That’s Kuyt!
Just signed with the club this summer, brand new!”
“He came over from the Eredivisie, really strong player—hoping he settles into the Premier League’s pace quickly!”
Ethan let out a bit of a sigh, too.
“You wouldn’t believe it, but last season our main striker was Morientes—massive name, honestly.
Before he came to Liverpool, he’d reached a Champions League final with Monaco, and even won the Champions League’s top scorer award once.
He was an absolute top-tier talent.
But somehow, once he got to the Premier League, he just completely dried up, couldn’t find his scoring touch at all, and in the end the club had to sell him back to La Liga.
And the second he went back; he was scoring goals for fun again.
Such a shame, really.”
Their conversation happened to be overheard by a middle-aged Liverpool fan sitting nearby who let out a loud laugh at once.
“Bloody Morientes!
Killed our whole attack last season!
Wasted so many good chances, for nothing!”
Having gotten that off his chest, he turned straight back to look at Kuyt out on the pitch, threw his arm up and started shouting.
“But Kuyt’ll come good!
Solid lad, that one.
Scored last week against Newcastle, didn’t he!
He’ll bag loads of goals at Anfield, you watch!”
The fans around him joined in loudly at the same time in agreement with warmth.
In the middle of that sea of people, Dean slowly felt the tension easing out of his body, adjusting, bit by bit, to the atmosphere around him.
But clearly, Ethan was settling into it far faster than he was.
The shouting never once let up.
There was no coldness here.
No stillness.
Only one shared faith, a love at full boil, and a fever that never seemed to end.
Just as everyone kept building toward fever pitch, the whole of Anfield suddenly erupted with an even fiercer new wave of roaring.
Peep!!
The referee out on the pitch blew the whistle for kickoff.
Liverpool at home against Tottenham Hotspur; the first football match Dean had ever watched in his life had begun.