Liverpool Football Club is a Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. The club has wonfive European Cups, three UEFA Cups, three UEFA Super Cups, 18 League titles, seven FA Cups, a record eight League Cups, and 15FA Community Shields.
The club was founded in 1892 and joined the Football League the following year. The club has played at Anfield since its formation. Liverpool established itself as a major force in both English and European football during the 1970s and 1980s when Bill Shankly andBob Paisley led the club to 11 League titles and seven European trophies. Under the management of Rafa Benítez and captained by Steven Gerrard Liverpool re-emerged as European champions once again, winning the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final againstMilan in spite of being 3–0 down at half time.
Liverpool was the ninth highest-earning football club in the world for 2013–14, with an annual revenue of €306 million, and the world'seighth most valuable football club in 2015, valued at $982 million. The club holds many long-standing rivalries, most notably the North West Derby against Manchester United and the Merseyside derby with Everton.
The club's supporters have been involved in two major tragedies. The first was the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, where escaping fans were pressed against a collapsing wall in the Heysel Stadium, with 39 people—mostly Italians and Juventus fans—losing their lives, after which English clubs were given a five-year ban from European competition. The second was the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, where 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a crush against perimeter fencing. The team changed from red shirts and white shorts to an all-red home strip in 1964 which has been used ever since. The club's anthem is "You'll Never Walk Alone".
Anfield was built in 1884 on land adjacent to Stanley Park. It was originally used by Everton before the club moved to Goodison Park after a dispute over rent with Anfield owner John Houlding. Left with an empty ground, Houlding founded Liverpool in 1892 and the club has played at Anfield ever since. The capacity of the stadium at the time was 20,000, although only 100 spectators attended Liverpool's first match at Anfield.
In 1906 the banked stand at one end of the ground was formally renamed the Spion Kop after a hill in KwaZulu-Natal. The hill was the site of theBattle of Spion Kop in the Second Boer War, where over 300 men of the Lancashire Regiment died, many of them from Liverpool. At its peak, the stand could hold 28,000 spectators and was one of the largest single-tier stands in the world. Many stadia in England had stands named after Spion Kop, but Anfield's was the largest of them at the time; it could hold more supporters than some entire football grounds.
Anfield could accommodate more than 60,000 supporters at its peak, and had a capacity of 55,000 until the 1990s. The Taylor Report and Premier League regulations obliged Liverpool to convert Anfield to an all-seater stadium in time for the 1993–94 season, reducing the capacity to 45,276.The findings of the Taylor Report precipitated the redevelopment of the Kemlyn Road Stand, which was rebuilt in 1992, coinciding with the centenary of the club, and is now known as the Centenary Stand. An extra tier was added to the Anfield Road end in 1998, which further increased the capacity of the ground but gave rise to problems when it was opened. A series of support poles and stanchions were inserted to give extra stability to the top tier of the stand after movement of the tier was reported at the start of the 1999–2000 season.
Because of restrictions on expanding the capacity at Anfield, Liverpool announced plans to move to the proposed Stanley Park Stadium in May 2002. Planning permission was granted in July 2004, and in September 2006, Liverpool City Council agreed to grant Liverpool a 999-year lease on the proposed site. Following the takeover of the club by George Gillett and Tom Hicks in February 2007, the proposed stadium was redesigned. The new design was approved by the Council in November 2007. The stadium was scheduled to open in August 2011 and would hold 60,000 spectators, with HKS, Inc. contracted to build the stadium. Construction was halted in August 2008, as Gillett and Hicks had difficulty in financing the £300 million needed for the development. In October 2012, BBC Sport reported that Fenway Sports Group, the new owners of Liverpool FC, had decided to redevelop their current home at Anfield stadium, rather than building a new stadium in Stanley Park. As part of the redevelopment the capacity of Anfield was to increase from 45,276 to approximately 60,000 and would cost approximately £150m.
Liverpool's longest-established rivalry is with fellow Merseyside and Liverpool-based team Everton, against whom the club contest the Merseyside derby. Their rivalry stems from Liverpool's formation and the dispute with Everton officials and the then owners of Anfield. Unlike other rivalries, there is no political, geographical or religious split between Liverpool and Everton. The Merseyside derby is usually sold out. It is one of the few local derbies which do not enforce fan segregation, and hence was known as the "friendly derby". Since the mid-1980s, the rivalry has intensified both on and off the field and, since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, the Merseyside derby has had more players sent off than any other Premier League game. It has been referred to as "the most ill-disciplined and explosive fixture in the Premier League".
Liverpool's rivalry with Manchester United is viewed as a manifestation of the cities' competition during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.The two clubs alternated as champions between 1964 and 1967, and Manchester United became the first English team to win the European Cup in1968, followed by Liverpool's four European Cup victories. Despite the 38 league titles and eight European Cups between them the two rivals have rarely been successful at the same time – Liverpool's run of titles in the 1970s and 1980s coincided with Manchester United's 26-year title drought, and United's success in the Premier League-era has likewise coincided with Liverpool's ongoing drought, and the two clubs have finished first and second in the league only five times. Nonetheless, former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said in 2002, "My greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch", and the last player to be transferred between the two clubs was Phil Chisnall, who moved to Liverpool from Manchester United in 1964,.
Because of its successful history, Liverpool is often featured when football is depicted in British culture and has appeared in a number of media firsts. The club appeared in the first edition of the BBC's Match of the Day, which screened highlights of its match against Arsenal at Anfield on 22 August 1964. The first football match to be televised in colour was between Liverpool and West Ham United, broadcast live in March 1967. Liverpool fans featured in the Pink Floyd song "Fearless", in which they sang excerpts from "You'll Never Walk Alone". To mark the club's appearance in the 1988 FA Cup Final, Liverpool released a song known as the "Anfield Rap", featuring John Barnes and other members of the squad.
A documentary drama on the Hillsborough disaster, written by Jimmy McGovern, was screened in 1996. It featured Christopher Eccleston as Trevor Hicks, whose story is the focus of the script. Hicks, who lost two teenage daughters in the disaster, went on to campaign for safer stadiums and helped to form the Hillsborough Families Support Group. Liverpool featured in the film The 51st State (also known as Formula 51), in which ex-hitman Felix DeSouza (Robert Carlyle) is a keen supporter of the team and the last scene takes place at a match between Liverpool and Manchester United.[109] The club was featured in a children's television show called Scully; the plot revolved around a young boy, Francis Scully, who tried to gain a trial match with Liverpool. The show featured prominent Liverpool players of the time such as Kenny Dalglish.
Liverpool's first trophy was the Lancashire League, which it won in the club's first season. In 1901, the club won its first League title, while its first success in the FA Cup was in 1965. In terms of the number of trophies won, Liverpool's most successful decade was the 1980s, when the club won six League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, five Charity Shields (one shared) and two European Cups. Liverpool has won the English League Championship eighteen times, the FA Cup seven times and the League Cup a record eight times. The club achieved a League and FA Cup "double" in 1986 and won the League and European Cup double both in 1977 and in 1984. Liverpool also won the League Cup in 1984 to complete a treble, a feat repeated (albeit with different trophies) in 2001, when the club won the FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup.
The club has accumulated more top-flight wins and points than any other English team.Liverpool also has the highest average league finishing position (3,3) for the 50-year period to 2015 and second-highest average league finishing position for the period 1900–1999 after Arsenal, with an average league placing of 8.7. Liverpool has won the European Cup, Europe's premier club competition, five times, an English record and only surpassed by Real Madrid and A.C. Milan. Liverpool's fifth European Cup win, in 2005, meant that the club was awarded the trophy permanently and was also awarded a multiple-winner badge. Liverpool has won the UEFA Cup, Europe's secondary club competition, three times.
Domestic
League
First Division: 18
1900–01, 1905–06, 1921–22, 1922–23, 1946–47, 1963–64, 1965–66, 1972–73, 1975–76, 1976–77, 1978–79, 1979–80, 1981–82, 1982–83, 1983–84, 1985–86, 1987–88, 1989–90
Second Division: 4
1893–94, 1895–96, 1904–05, 1961–62
Lancashire League: 1
1892–93
Cups
FA Cup: 7
1964–65, 1973–74, 1985–86, 1988–89, 1991–92, 2000–01, 2005–06
League Cup: 8
1980–81, 1981–82, 1982–83, 1983–84, 1994–95, 2000–01, 2002–03, 2011–12
FA Charity / Community Shield: 15
1964*, 1965*, 1966, 1974*, 1976, 1977*, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1986*, 1988, 1989, 1990*, 2001, 2006 (* shared)
Super Cup: 1
1985–86
European
European Cup / UEFA Champions League: 5
1976–77, 1977–78, 1980–81, 1983–84, 2004–05
UEFA Cup: 3
1972–73, 1975–76, 2000–01
European Super Cup / UEFA Super Cup: 3
1977, 2001, 2005
Doubles and trebles
Doubles:[note 1]
League and FA Cup: 1
1985–86
League and League Cup: 2
1981–82, 1982–83
European Double (League and European Cup): 2
1976–77
League and UEFA Cup: 2
1972–73, 1975–76
League Cup and European Cup: 1
1980–81
Trebles[note 1]
League, League Cup and European Cup: 1
1983–84
FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup: 1
2000–01
Especially short competitions, such as the FA Community Shield and the UEFA Super Cup, are not generally considered to contribute towards a Double or Treble.
Liverpool anthems
"You'll Never Walk Alone"
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