OpinionAre The Beatles responsible for Liverpool’s present dominance over local rivals Everton?
- The red half of Merseyside has enjoyed an extended period of dominance over the blue half
- Could BBC’s Panorama programme be part of the reason for the mythologising of Liverpool’s Spion Kop?
It’s a tale of two preseasons. Liverpool are in the United States, continuing their efforts to crack a lucrative market. Jurgen Klopp’s team are performing in three of America’s most iconic venues.
They play Borussia Dortmund at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana; Sevilla in Boston’s Fenway Park; and Sporting Lisbon in New York’s Yankee Stadium.
Everton have been in Switzerland. FC Sion and their 14,000-capacity Stade de Tourbillon does not quite have the same appeal. Nor does the picturesque but tiny Stade Saint-Marc for the meeting with AS Monaco. The build-up for Marco Silva’s side has been low key.
The Champions League winners are a huge attraction. Their neighbours are not. But the status of clubs are not merely defined by results and trophies. Liverpool and Everton’s paths diverged more than half a century ago when Anfield became the focus of global recognition in a way that Goodison Park did not. If Evertonians want someone to blame there is an easy target: The Beatles.
The main conceit of Yesterday, one of the summer’s big films, is that a shift in time creates a world where the Fab Four did not exist but somehow a musician maintains a memory of their songs and performs them as his own. In a football version, would the Kop have earned international repute without the Beatles?