Two Tribes_Liverpool, Everton and a City on the Brink

by Tony Evans

  Lineker was the highest scorer at the World Cup with six goals. Yet the Olarticoechea block was an allegory for his season. Forty domestic goals and six in the World Cup should have brought more reward than a clutch of personal honours. He won the Golden Boot in Mexico to go with the Football Writers’ and Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year awards but the greatness of his season was undermined slightly by the failure of his teams to win a trophy. It would have been much more satisfying if Lineker had shot his sides to success. For a player who was so often in the right place at the right time, this season he was always in the wrong situation.

  The World Cup brought Lineker global attention. It was a different kind of fame from McAvennie’s. The Scot’s elevation to notoriety suited the Thatcherite narrative: grab success quickly and enjoy its benefits with shameless abandon. The media were predisposed to celebrate quick-hit fame. Vulgarity was a sign of vigour and if McAvennie appeared a little crass, it went with the territory.

  The West Ham striker was an unlikely poster-boy for the ‘loadsamoney’ age. He was just a working-class Glaswegian man who loved scoring goals and the attention it brought. His personality and beliefs were grounded in a west of Scotland culture that the Conservative leadership found alien. But he was one of the symbols of an era when Britain’s horizons were narrow. Unknowingly, McAvennie became emblematic of conspicuous consumption. The public enjoyed him for that as much as his goals but the road to excess was a blind alley for such a brilliant footballer.

  Lineker never captured the imagination of red-top editors. He was sensible, generally guarded in his comments and articulate in a predictable manner. He was married and avoided the whiff of scandal.

  McAvennie’s image was colourful but cartoonish. Lineker’s was solid, perhaps a little dull. The reality was different. The England striker could carouse with the best of them. The big difference is that McAvennie had little room for growth on and off the pitch. The shelf life of a tabloid tearaway is limited. Lineker would develop as a player and a person. The move to Catalonia would help that journey.

  Yet again, a team got Lineker on the cheap. The deal was agreed before the World Cup. If Everton had waited until after the tournament they could have upped their asking price.

  At the same time the Lineker transaction was taking place, Liverpool sold Ian Rush to Juventus for £3.2 million and Dalglish was allowed to keep the striker at Anfield for another season on loan. It was not the best bit of business Kendall had ever done.

  So, the campaign was finally over. The European ban may not have been lifted but many of the clouds over the game had gone. English football, with its ability to regenerate itself on an annual basis, had come close to the brink after Heysel but survived. It was time to move on.

  There was one, last loose end. The ScreenSport Super Cup final still needed to be settled.

  The final would be played in September, a month into the new season. Five games of the 1986–87 campaign had already taken place before Everton went to Anfield for the first leg. Liverpool won 3–1 in front of a crowd of 20,660. Ian Rush scored twice.

  Two weeks later, on the last day of September, the second leg was played. This time 26,064 showed at Goodison. Rush, the scourge of Everton, got another hat-trick in a 4–1 victory. Both matches felt like friendlies.

  At the end, Liverpool took another lap of honour. This time very few Evertonians stayed. The Gwladys Street End emptied and only the away supporters in the Park End lingered to watch the faintly embarrassed celebrations. There were, incongruously, two trophies handed over to the team, the Football League’s version and the sponsor’s award. The Liverpool players took them to their fans and, somehow, the silverware disappeared into the seething mass. When Rush and his team got back to the dressing room, there was no sign of the cups. ‘They went missing,’ the striker said. ‘The home fans were gone but we went over to our lot and a few of the fans had got on to the pitch. I handed one of them the cup I had. That went straight inside his coat and was never seen again.’

  No one ever asked where the trophies were. No one has ever found them. It summed up the Super Cup’s place in football history.

  At last, a line could be drawn under 1985–86. A new era had started. The game had changed for ever.

  What happened next

  The wheels of justice ground slowly over Heysel but a number of people were held responsible. Captain Johan Mahieu, the policeman responsible for Z section, was given a nine-month suspended sentence. Albert Roosens, the general secretary of the Belgian FA, was given six months, also suspended.

  It took nearly four years for the criminal court system to reach a conclusion: 24 Liverpool supporters were extradited on involuntary manslaughter charges. Of them, 14 were found guilty. They were sentenced to three years in prison, 18 months of which were suspended. Those convictions were handed down on 28 April 1989. By then, Merseyside was reeling from the Hillsborough disaster which happened 13 days earlier.

  In contrast with Hillsborough, officials lost their jobs over Heysel. An official inquiry took place in Brussels. Changes were made to policing and stadium safety. There was no cover-up. Belgium learnt from the disaster.

  Liverpool’s 47 councillors lost their appeal against the £106,000 surcharge. An extra fee of £242,000 was imposed. Most of the money was raised through collections, donations by the Labour movement and contributions from trade unions but the fightback against Thatcherism was over.

  Derek Hatton was expelled from the Labour Party a month after the cup final. He was later accused of corruption and underwent a long trial. In 1993, he was acquitted. ‘The whole weight of the British Establishment was against me,’ he said. ‘They wanted me in jail but there was no evidence. I didn’t do it.

  ‘After the trial, the verdict came in. I left the court and walked down the street. I was delighted. Some fella saw me and shouted across the road, “Brilliant, Degsy, you got away with it!” Sometimes you just can’t win.’

  Hatton is now a businessman and entrepreneur. He remains a committed socialist.

  Margaret Thatcher is dead. Her demise, at the age of 87 in 2013, was celebrated wildly in central Liverpool.

  The Big Five finally lost patience with the Football League and led a breakaway in 1992. Their creation, the Premier League, changed the nature of the game.

  Everton won the league in 1986–87 without Gary Lineker. It was the last time they won the title.

  Howard Kendall moved to Athletic Bilbao in 1987. He never got to lead a team in the European Cup. ‘If Heysel had not happened, Howard would never have left Goodison,’ Neville Southall said. The goalkeeper is probably right. Kendall returned to England and had two more spells in charge at Goodison. He never recaptured the success of the mid 1980s. The greatest manager in Goodison’s history died in 2015. Almost to the end he could outdrink the entire company and entertain them with tales of the glory days. Chinatown would never be the same again.

  Frank McAvennie went back north to Celtic in 1987 but had been bitten by the London bug. He spent much of his wages on flights south – and fines for being late for training. The scrapes and scandals got more frequent. He came back to Upton Park in 1989 but broke his leg. By then, there were more cocaine than champagne moments.

  His lowest point came in 2000 when he was charged with conspiracy to supply ecstasy and amphetamines. He spent a month on remand in Durham prison before he was acquitted by a jury.

  He is living in the north east of England, has cleaned up his act and is as vivacious as ever. He will always be a West Ham hero.

  Gary Lineker scored 21 goals in his first season at Barcelona. Then Johan Cruyff decided to play him deeper and wider. Sometimes genius is unfathomable. Lineker had spells at Tottenham and in Japan with Nagoya Grampus Eight. He was within one goal of equalling Bobby Charlton’s scoring record for England but was substituted by Graham Taylor in the striker’s final game for the national side, much to the player’s regret.

  Lineker was ne
ver booked or sent off. He had a reputation for being a little bland. Then his personality began to show. He became the front man advertising Leicester-based Walkers Crisps and the presenter of Match of the Day. He has commented increasingly on social issues, often challenging right-wing narratives. He has turned into a national treasure.

  Kenny Dalglish did not retire. After a trophy-less season in 1986–87, he retooled Liverpool, buying John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge. They went close to winning the Double again the next season, losing the FA Cup final to Wimbledon.

  The Hillsborough disaster changed everything for the Liverpool manager. His role in bringing comfort to the families of the dead elevated his reputation in the city but came at great emotional cost. He resigned as Liverpool manager in 1991, after winning the title the previous season. It is a surprise he lasted that long. The club let him down by not providing enough support. Few people in football understood the depth of the trauma suffered by all those involved at Hillsborough and Dalglish carried out more difficult duties than anyone had a right to expect of a football manager. He took them on willingly.

  After a short break, he came back to manage Blackburn Rovers. The Lancashire club won the Premier League in 1994–95. It was a stunning achievement.

  He returned as Liverpool manager in 2011 and was the last Anfield incumbent to win a trophy – the League Cup the following year. The American owners of the club sacked him three months later. They thought he was a relic of a different age. He was: one where silverware was important and substance outweighed image.

  After a spell when he was treated as an outsider – he did not feel welcome at Anfield – the owners realized his status in Liverpool and made him a non-executive director. They have now named a stand after him.

  West Ham went back to being the sort of club that gets relegated, comes back up and then provides easy fodder for the bigger teams. They moved from the Boleyn Ground to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford in 2016. They left their soul behind in Upton Park.

  Ken Bates sold Chelsea to Roman Abramovich, changing the English game for ever. The Russian oligarch’s money elevated the west London club to one of the sport’s richest and most powerful teams. Stamford Bridge is now a compact, atmospheric ground and cars no longer park pitchside. These days the headhunters at the match are from recruitment agencies and have large expense accounts. But the Bridge has enough old-school supporters to remain hostile.

  Ron Atkinson went on to win trophies with Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa. His success was overshadowed by controversy in 2004. The man who helped break down racial barriers in the game was heard on TV commentary making an offensive racist comment when he thought the microphones were off. It destroyed his career as a pundit. There is no excuse for what he said. It was common language until the 1990s and Atkinson had not moved with the times.

  It was a sad ending. Big Ron is no bigot. He remains an excellent talker about the game and a brilliant raconteur.

  Television was supposed to kill football. It had the opposite effect. The small-screen deals have spiralled in a manner that no one could have predicted. In 2017, the team that finished bottom of the Premier League received £93.5 million in TV cash. The boom shows no sign of levelling out. The money has turned the game from the cottage industry it was in 1985 into a billion-pound business. The visionaries of the 1980s were thinking in terms of thousands of pounds. They could not have imagined how things would turn out.

  Everton were hurt by the consequences of Heysel but a myth has developed that the disaster ended their march to dominance. Kendall won the title in 1986–87 but the momentum began to fade. Everton’s recruitment was not as ambitious as in the summer of 1985. Plus, they let their biggest assets go. Kendall went to the Basque Country; he said in his autobiography that the Goodison board did not match Bilbao’s financial offer until very late. Had they put the money on the table earlier, he would probably have stayed.

  Colin Harvey was a great coach. He was not a great manager. Everyone willed him success but there was something missing – Kendall.

  Everton were affected badly by Hillsborough. They felt a fraternal pain at the city’s loss and, unfortunately, were facing Liverpool in another Merseyside FA Cup final overshadowed by tragedy. This game was more difficult for the Everton players than in 1986. ‘The ’86 final was a year on after Heysel and the disaster didn’t happen to the city,’ Neville Southall said. ‘In that sense you were distanced from it. In 1989 it was a month on from the disaster and everyone knew someone affected by it. It was hard to play. I didn’t want to play. We couldn’t win. If we had won, we still would have lost.’

  Southall is right. Liverpool had the backing of the vast majority of families of those killed in the disaster and a reason to play. Everton only had their competitive instinct, which was seriously blunted by events. It was another day when Merseyside came together at Wembley but there was nothing uplifting about it this time. The agony was still too raw for both sides.

  The last time Everton won a trophy was 1995, when they beat Manchester United in the FA Cup final. As the millennium arrived, they changed ownership and the finances were so badly managed that in the course of a decade the club went from having assets of about £20 million to being almost £50 million in debt. Evertonians wondering why the club have suffered in the 2000s should look closer to home than Heysel.

  Everton are on the way up again. They are looking to move to a new dockside stadium and have some cash at last. Better days should lie ahead.

  The relationship between Liverpool and Everton fans – especially the young ones – has grown bitter. It is unseemly that Steaua Bucharest flags are displayed on the Kop to mock Evertonians. It shows a complete misunderstanding of history.

  The same can be said of the attempts by some to recast Heysel as Everton’s tragedy. There were no chants of ‘Murderers’ in 1986. The city, the clubs and the supporters have changed. It has not been for the better.

  Peter Reid has not changed. He still understands the importance of football clubs to communities. Despite his longstanding disappointment, he was still wringing positive effects from that day in May 1986 a quarter of a century later.

  In 2011, he auctioned his cup-final runnersup medal to raise money to pay Plymouth Argyle staff when the team ran out of cash. It helped keep the near-bankrupt club alive.

  Argyle sacked him within months. It’s impossible to keep Reid down, though; he remains an important figure around Goodison Park and his punditry is always worth listening to.

  The People’s Game is now a largely televisual event for its mass audience. But it can still generate excitement and fanaticism. The feeling of going to a stadium for the match remains one of the great experiences. Football has changed but it has not lost its allure.

  1. Poverty beside the Mersey: the ‘second city of the Empire’ was swamped with Irish immigrants after the Great Famine, turning Liverpool into the most squalid city in Britain. This is Emily Place, 1897, a typically grim inner-city area.

  2. Taken almost 40 years later, a court dwelling in Ben Johnson Street, off Scotland Road, shows little had changed in this poverty-stricken neighbourhood where the city’s identity developed. The word Scouse was initially used as an insult, but it soon became a badge of pride to be called a Scouser.

  3. The luxury liner Aquitania on the landing stage at Liverpool’s Pier Head. Wealth and power flowed through ‘Torytown’ but within a mile there were scenes of unimaginable deprivation.

  4. Everton FC, 1891. The original occupants of Anfield display the League Championship trophy in their final year at the ground before departing to Goodison Park after an acrimonious squabble over the ground’s ownership.

  5. John Houlding, an Everton director, was left with an empty stadium and no team after buying Anfield against the wishes of the rest of the board. The brewer formed his own club, Liverpool FC, in 1892.

  6. Striking back: the city developed a reputation for industrial militancy. In 1970, Liverpool was a
t the forefront of the national dockworkers’ strike. Here dockers throng the Pier Head.

  7. In the eye of the storm: Labour councillors Tony Mulhearn (left) and Derek Hatton address the media at the height of Liverpool City Council’s battle against the Thatcher government in 1984.

  8. In the mid-1980s, youngsters protest on the streets to demand jobs and show their contempt for Thatcher. The boy resting his chin on the ‘Giz a job’ sign is wearing a ski hat in club colours, reflecting the twin obsessions of the city: politics and football.

  9. The enemy within: March 1989 and Margaret Thatcher visits the region that put up most resistance to her brutal Conservative government policies. She remains one of the most hated figures in history for many Merseysiders.

  10. Riotous behaviour: 1985 was a violent year in football. In March, Millwall rioted at Kenilworth Road during an FA Cup tie away to Luton Town. Police lost control. Hooliganism became a political issue.

  11. Liverpool fans battle with police at Heysel Stadium in May 1985. On a dark day for the game and the city, 39 mainly Italian fans were killed before the European Cup final against Juventus. Following this disaster, English clubs were banned from continental competition for five years.

  12. May 1985: not all the horror was caused by violence. At Valley Parade a stand caught fire during a match between Bradford City and Lincoln City. The fire killed 56 people in the dilapidated ground. In this era, conditions for spectators across the country were unpleasant and dangerous.

  13. Howard Kendall shows off his new striker. Gary Lineker, England’s goal-scoring sensation, joined Everton in the summer of 1985, adding extra firepower to the champions. The signing showed that Goodison Park was the most attractive destination in the game.