For the love of Liverpool: FSG prove they’re not playing favourites and can finally boast about their UK investment

It has been a brilliant year for Liverpool’s owners. Fenway Sports Group (FSG) have had the sort of success that their rivals can only dream about.

Not only did Jurgen Klopp’s team win the Champions League last month but their baseball franchise, the Boston Red Sox, are the holders of the World Series title. The Red Sox are in London over the weekend to play the New York Yankees in two games that represent Major League Baseball’s first foray into the European market.

The two parts of FSG’s empire rarely come together. Liverpool have played twice at Fenway Park on US tours and have another game in Boston next month but the clubs have remained at arm’s length. There has been little cross-promotion or synergy between the teams.

That’s largely because of the suspicion on Merseyside felt towards FSG immediately after the takeover in 2010. It took Anfield a long time to recover from the fractious tenure of George Gillett and Tom Hicks. The former owners plunged Liverpool into debt and internal strife and a residual mistrust of Americans lingered around the club.

The reality is that nationality is the only thing John W Henry and his fellow investors in FSG have in common with Gillett and Hicks. Henry, the principal owner, was never going to pump Manchester City-style cash into the team but neither was he looking to make huge profits out of football. What he really wanted to do was win and achieve the same sort of glory he had brought to the Red Sox.

When the 69-year-old took over at Fenway Park in 2002, there was an almost intractable sense of pessimism around the Sox. They had not won a World Series since 1918. A year later they sold Babe Ruth, the sport’s most legendary figure, to the Yankees. Misery endured for decades. “The curse of the Bambino” – Ruth’s nickname – was said to haunt Fenway.

Henry broke the curse. The Sox won the World Series in 2004 and have captured another three since. The first victory had a huge effect on the businessman and shaped his attitude towards sport.

The somewhat geeky Henry was hailed as a hero in Boston. He had never been sporty when young – he suffered from asthma – but he was able to experience the type of adoration that is directed towards winning sportsmen. “I felt the love of a city,” he said. It was a seductive feeling.

You could see how much Henry – and Mike Gordon and Tom Werner, the other main investors – enjoyed the Champions League celebrations in Madrid. Bringing Europe’s most prestigious trophy back to Anfield was vindication for a regime that, until the arrival of Klopp, sometimes tried to be a little too clever for its own good. The positive feelings towards FSG are running strong but Henry understands that there is a greater prize available.

Next season it will be 30 years since Liverpool won the league. It’s nowhere near Boston’s “curse”, where hardly anyone alive had seen a World Series victory for the Red Sox, but an entire generation of Kopites have grown up in an era without a title. The outpouring of joy on the streets if Klopp manages to win the Premier League will, most likely, make the celebrations after Madrid look like a garden party. Henry understands the craving. He wants to recapture a similar feeling to the explosion of relief and rejoicing that the first World Series brought to New England. It could be an even bigger event on Merseyside.

It has been possible to doubt FSG’s methods over the years but the will to win has always been constant.

The owners have always been very careful to ensure that neither Red Sox fans nor Liverpool supporters felt that their team were receiving preferential treatment. The economics of baseball and football are very different but anyone who believed that money was being funnelled from one side of the Atlantic to the other was delusional. If anything, it is arguable that FSG underplayed the Red Sox’s achievements in the British market because their success contrasted sharply with Liverpool’s inability to win silverware. There is no longer any need for the owners to feel shy about their stateside triumphs now that Klopp has turned the team into champions of Europe. There is huge potential on both sides for creating stronger connections between the cities, the clubs and the fanbases.

Baseball in London is part of a wider strategy for MLB to develop new markets and camp out on the Premier League’s territory. FSG support the global expansion of baseball but also have narrower ambitions in England: to bring the title back to Liverpool for the first time in the modern era. Everyone at Anfield is focused on winning more trophies and the Red Sox will never distract from that aim.