It should have been a month of celebration for Liverpool supporters.
A month of trophy lifts and parades, of drinking and dancing and singing and smiling. A shared experience and shared joy.
The end of the long, painful wait.
League title number 19 was to be enjoyed like no other. The party had been 30 years in the making. Back on top, back on their perch, and the Reds were ready to tell the world all about it.
"The Unbearables" were primed.
It’ll still happen. Liverpool will still be crowned champions, one way or another. They are still the best team in the country, and by some distance too. Jurgen Klopp and his team are still assured of their place in club history. Nothing has changed.
Except everything.
With the Bundesliga back this weekend and the Premier League working its way, slowly but surely, towards a June return date, Goal has been speaking to dozens of supporters, finding out how they feel about the idea of professional football returning.
The image, painted mainly on social media or by ill-informed commentators on rolling news channels, is of a selfish band of fans concerned not with public health, safety or the integrity of the sport, but with that elusive title; that long-awaited chance to bask in the glow of success.
The reality, as ever, is rather different.
Paul Machin is an Anfield season-ticket holder and runs the popular Redmen TV channel, which produces over 30 shows per month on Liverpool.
He is preoccupied with the “moral quandary” he and many other supporters face.
“It’s a real dilemma,” he says. “If I was just a fan, I’d be desperate to see it back. And as a business owner, whose business centres around football, then I could really use it being back too.
“But I’ve seen the realities of this virus. We’ve lost a family member to it. I had it myself back in March, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s horrible.
“In addition to that, my wife is a teacher, and she’s preparing to go back to work in a few weeks, not knowing for sure that it will be safe.
“With all that, it makes it really hard to rationalise things and think only about football.”
Machin’s concerns are well-founded. On Merseyside, almost 1,000 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19, while there have been nearly 5,000 cases recorded across the region.
On Monday, Steve Rotheram, metro mayor for Liverpool City Region, suggested that the UK government’s relaxation of lockdown rules may have come too soon, while the decision to allow Liverpool’s last fixture, the Champions League defeat to Atletico Madrid on March 11, to go ahead with more than 52,000 fans packed inside Anfield, is one that remains under scrutiny.
Rotheram, a Liverpool supporter, is among those who have called for an independent inquiry.
“I remember being out after that game, and knowing it was the last game, the last night out we’d be having for a while,” says Neil Atkinson, of the award-winning podcast The Anfield Wrap.
“Even before the game, a lot of people felt conflicted. They weren’t sure they should be going. They knew something wasn’t right. It was a staggering decision.”
Atkinson dismisses the idea peddled by some – including Joe Anderson, the Everton-supporting mayor of Liverpool no less – that allowing the game to return now would encourage fans to abandon social distancing measures by congregating at or around stadiums.
“Last week, we saw people doing exactly that as part of the VE Day celebrations,” he says. “We’ve seen people doing it in parks, on beaches, on Westminster Bridge even. They were on the national news! Everyone saw them!
“Concerns that some people may flout the rules are perfectly valid. But to re-categorise ‘some people’ as ‘football fans’ is typical of the way too many people perceive supporters. It’s been the same since the 1950s, this impression people have of fans just running amok.
“Are we saying that thousands of people would turn up at Anfield, where they won’t be able to see the game, where they won’t be able to get a drink because the pubs are closed, where they would risk their own health and that of those around them, and where they would potentially damage the reputation of their own football club?
“A small number of people might, but a small number of people will do everything to flout the rules anyway. We’ve already seen a small number of people do it, live on the news. I’m sure they didn’t all have Premier League season tickets!”
Another Reds season-ticket holder who wishes to remain anonymous agrees wholeheartedly.
“I think, generally, people have shown remarkable patience and understanding, given the circumstances,” he says. “They’ve not seen their parents, their friends, their partners and their children in some instances.
“People have not been able to attend funerals, they’ve been leaving birthday presents on their loved ones’ front step. They’ve done everything they can to help protect people, and then you get people like Joe Anderson basically saying they will just abandon all that because football is more important to them. It’s insulting, not just to Liverpool fans but to people in general.”
Anfield, of course, will be without supporters for some time to come. The days of the packed Kop, the red-lined streets look a long way away. We can expect games to be played behind closed doors until 2021 at least, and probably longer.
“There are definitely mixed emotions about that,” says John Howard, a Liverpool season-ticket holder.
“I’m looking forward to having football in my life again. I don’t think you appreciate how big a part it plays, day-to-day, until it’s not there. You need something in your life that gets your blood pumping, and that’s been taken away for a lot of people.
“But then, to me, football is a social sport, a social occasion, and I’m not sure how much enjoyment will be taken away from not being able to be there, or even to watch games with friends and family. It’s not the same, is it?”
Paul Machin of The Redmen TV agrees.
“That’s what I go to football for,” he says. “I love the passion, I love being in the crowd. There’s nothing quite like it.
“My best football memories are of those random moments, celebrating with a complete stranger next to me, sharing the experience. It’s what I go for.
“So, to lose that feeling, it’s a massive thing. Football will be back but it won’t be as good, unfortunately.”
And what about the moral debate, the idea that investing so much time and resource into what many people see, still, as a leisure pursuit, simply feels wrong against a backdrop of death, illness and uncertainty across the world? How can we talk about football, they say, when there are far more important things going on?
“I get that,” says Neil Atkinson, “but we are talking about the world returning to some kind of normality, and for a lot of people that involves the return of football.
“It’s a big part of a lot of people’s lives. Should we not talk about Tiger King? Or Dua Lipa’s new album? How can we talk about television and music at a time like this?
“Of course we can, just as we can talk about sport, or films, or anything else that makes life normal.
“Sport is more than just what happens on the pitch. It’s a part of life. It matters to people. I use rugby league as an example; I don’t think enough people are talking about what’s going on there. Entire communities are on the brink of collapse. Is that not important? Is that not worth talking about?”
One of the arguments put forward by those eager to see football’s return is the idea of “boosting the nation’s morale”, that it would provide not only something to watch on television but a distraction, something to release people from the everyday grind.
Plenty disagree.
“I don't give a f*ck about the nation's morale,” said the on-loan Newcastle defender Danny Rose this week, while the likes of Todd Cantwell, Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero and Tyrone Mings have expressed similar misgivings about returning to action. Player safety, quite rightly, has been high on the agenda during talks between the Premier League, its clubs and its broadcast partners.
So, too, has the idea of “sporting integrity”. While Liverpool’s task, should football resume, is relatively simple – they need six points from nine matches to be crowned champions – elsewhere in the league there is far more uncertainty. Particularly surrounding promotion and relegation, for example, where the financial repercussions are huge.
That has led, naturally, to accusations of self-interest, as clubs and supporters argue for and against football’s restart.
Liverpool fans are billed as the selfish ones, cold and uncaring, obsessed with only one kind of 19, while those lower down the league are the saboteurs, dragging their heels, using every trick in the book in a bid to save their own bacon.
Everyone has their opinion – and their bias.
“Anyone who feels they have a neutral opinion on this is deluded,” says Paul Machin. “Everyone has a side, and everyone’s position is motivated by their own interest.
“Liverpool fans, whether we want to admit it or not, have a natural bias towards ending the season for obvious reasons. Others don’t, for obvious reasons.”
The Newsroom Podcast | @lizzidoyle
— The Redmen TV (@TheRedmenTV) May 12, 2020
"I do not blame footballers because they are living in a county which has the highest death rate in Europe. I'm not going to criticise a footballer for being wary about playing."
Video: https://t.co/9BTVVEa8NQ
Podcast: https://t.co/nyyVFThRn2 pic.twitter.com/BwhKrEqvOh
Everton supporters are among those with little reason to push for football’s restart. The Blues were 12th in the table when the season was suspended, in little danger of relegation, but out of the FA Cup and unlikely to challenge for a European place.
But how do their fans see it? Are they after a bit of normality, something to look forward to in these times of crisis, or would they rather see Liverpool denied an on-pitch league title?
“That doesn’t really bother me,” says Gareth Halsall, a Goodison Park season-ticket holder. “Sure, I’d wind my Red mates up and have a joke, tell them they haven’t really won it, but when a team is so far ahead, everyone knows they’re the best, don’t they? You can’t argue with Liverpool as champions.
“For me, the issues around starting up are not about whether Liverpool get the title, they’re issues of health and logistics. Do players want to play? Can their safety be guaranteed? And from a sporting perspective, will the game be compromised beyond recognition? Those are the questions, and as yet they haven’t been answered.”
Another Goodison regular, Tony Scott, insists the season should not resume. Scott is part of All Together Now, a weekly Everton podcast, and tells Goal that the idea of games being played in empty neutral stadiums simply “doesn’t sit right.”
“I love football,” he says. “I miss it dearly, it’s all I’ve ever known in my life. But how can it return now? How can I not see my niece, my brother, my father or my mother but 22 men can run around a football pitch together? That’s not right, surely?
“I don’t think it’s fair or right that the season restarts at this point.”
Matt Ladson, of the website This is Anfield, offers the alternative viewpoint.
“What you’ve got to remember is that in a few weeks' time, the world will look slightly different than it does now,” he says.
“Most people who have a job will be back working in some capacity by June 12, I would say, so why would footballers not be part of that?
“My big argument on the safety thing is that if you are a footballer, you are only coming into contact with people who have been tested for the virus. It’s a safer environment than many other people in society will face.”
Ladson believes Liverpool will be champions, one way or another, but admits that the manner of the Reds’ victory, after three decades of dreaming, would be something of a damp squib.
“We’d be lying if we said otherwise,” he says. “It’s an anti-climax not just for supporters, but for Jurgen Klopp and his players too. You feel for them as much as anyone.
“We’ve all dreamt of how this league win would happen, and how we’d all celebrate it – we’d planned it even! – but now we can’t. It’s a bit deflating, to say the least.
“But there’s a bigger picture to think of. And who knows, maybe it might drive the team on to even more success in the future.
“Imagine that? A double celebration next year for league title number 20. Back on our perch for good. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
