“I’ve changed my job, my house, my wife, my car, my clothes, my hair. But I’ll never change my love of Liverpool.”
Jesus 'Jess' Gil is smiling as he delivers the killer line, but he isn’t joking.
We are sitting in Plaza Mayor, right in the heart of Madrid. The sun is shining and the beer is flowing. Liverpool are in town. That night, they will take on Atletico Madrid in the Champions League at the Wanda Metropolitano.
For Jesus, that’s kind of a big deal. “The biggest!” he smiles, before telling Goal why he and his friends spent most of Monday driving 400 kilometres to the Spanish capital from Bilbao.
“We are the Basque Reds,” he says, proudly. “We support Liverpool from Bilbao, Donostia-San Sebastian, all over. And once we knew Liverpool were coming to Madrid, so were we!”
Jesus was born and bred in Bilbao, but he has been a Liverpool fan since 1983, when Joe Fagan’s side visited San Mames in the second round of the old European Cup.
“That night changed everything,” he says. “Ian Rush scored a header, Liverpool won 1-0, and I’ve been in love with the club ever since.
He’s not the only one, it seems. Jesus, the secretary of the Basque Reds, laughs as he introduces his group.
“We are all obsessed,” he says. “It is our life.” To illustrate the point perfectly, he calls out to his friend, Antonio, across the table.
“It’s his wife’s birthday tomorrow!” Jesus grins. “He had to buy her a huge seafood meal, like a banquet, to say sorry!”
Antonio smiles back. “I don’t know if it will be enough!” he admits, holding his hands up.
For Gorka, the youngest member of the group, this will be the first Liverpool game he has watched live. Like Jesus, he is from Bilbao. He works as a steward for a fifth-tier Spanish club, but has been supporting the Reds since he was 10.
“I played a lot of FIFA,” he explains, “and Liverpool had Fernando Torres, so…”
For all of the Basque Reds – and there are 54 members in total – this is a special day, a rare chance to catch a glimpse of their heroes and, maybe, to pick up where they left off before Covid-19 changed everything for everyone.
“The last game I went to was Atletico [in February 2020],” says Jesus. “Liverpool provides our club with tickets for six home matches each season, and we try to spread those around the members.
“But, of course, the pandemic came and so it has not been possible for us to go at all. We’ve missed it!”
He’s not the only one. The previous evening, Goal had caught up with Jackie Willcox, the secretary of the Madrid Reds, who are based out of the legendary Triskel Tavern pub, a mile or so from Plaza Mayor.
Jackie is originally from Litherland, but moved to Spain 20 years ago as part of her job working for a credit card company. She remains an Anfield season-ticket holder, but like Jesus, Tuesday’s game was her first for more than 20 months.
“I’m nervous,” she said beforehand. “There’s apprehension being in a crowd again, especially with what’s happening with case numbers in the UK right now.
“But at the same time, I’m dead excited to see the Reds. It feels like closing a circle, if you like, where we can all start to move on.”
Jackie, like Jesus, Gorka and the rest, says she has devoted as much time and energy to Liverpool as anything else. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“There’s only room for one true love in everybody’s life,” she says. “People often ask me ‘Who do you support in Spain?’ But it’s only ever been Liverpool for me.
"My dad took me to my first game when I was two years old. My first hero was Jimmy Case, but my all-time favourite is Patrik Berger...”
The Madrid Reds started with five ‘original’ members. Now there are 40, a mix of Spaniards, English ex-pats, Scandinavians and others, who meet at the Triskel for every game.
“We call it our little Cavern Club,” Jackie says, a reference to the iconic Liverpool venue which helped launch The Beatles back in the 1960s.
“The owner is a Leeds fan, but she’s fantastic with us. We have our noticeboard up in there, she answers the phone and directs people to us if they need us. It’s a proper community.”
That word, community, is key where Liverpool are concerned. It sounds a cliche, but few clubs are as global as the Reds.
Goal is speaking to fans from Bilbao, San Sebastian and Madrid, but at the game on Tuesday night we will bump into supporters from Boston, South Africa, Dublin and Hong Kong. There are official supporters clubs everywhere – from Romania to Rwanda, and just about everywhere else in between.
“I always say that Liverpool is as close to religion as you can get,” says Jesus. ‘It’s not football, it’s family. That’s the way it is. I have known you for 10 minutes but look, you’re already one of us!”
Jackie remembers the scenes in 2019, when Liverpool came to Madrid for the Champions League final.
“We rented out a nightclub and had a party for fans,” she says. “Nightclubs over here don’t open until very late, so it was quite an easy sell to the owners; ‘Do you want to open at 6 o’clock and sell a shed load of beer before your night starts?’
“Within the Madrid Reds, there are a few local lads who are in a band. So, we rebranded them ‘The Fabinho Four’ for the night, and they did a gig for us, which was amazing.
“We knew it was going to be huge. As a supporters group, we knew people had great expectations of us, but it was an honour to welcome people to our city and celebrate that occasion.
“We could have sold out the Triskel 10 or 20 times over for that final, just for people to watch the game on TV. We had people from all over the world coming to us.”
They included, naturally, Jesus and his group, who popped in before heading off to the stadium.
“I paid 500 Euros for my ticket,” he says. “It was the best day of my life! We had to drive back at 5 o’clock in the morning, 60 people in a bus to Bilbao. There were a fair few Scousers with us, it was fantastic. A day I’ll never forget.”
For Jackie, it was during the pandemic that it really hit home how important the supporters’ groups are. With Spain, and Madrid in particular, spending much of last year in a strict lockdown, those connections, that sense of community, was vital.
“It kept everyone connected,” she says. “For nearly three months, we couldn’t leave the house. Once a day for essential shopping, that was it. People were joking that they were buying dogs so they could go out and walk them!
“As a Brit living abroad, and being away from my own family, it was hard to go through that, especially while watching what was going on back home. You knew people who were ill, you were worrying about yourself but also your friends and loved ones.
“The supporters group was really important during the lockdown. We did a lot of meetings on Zoom, the WhatsApp group was always on the go. We looked out for one another.
"We did some great things. We did some stuff with The Anfield Wrap, and we had Jose Enrique on doing a Q&A with us. He was fantastic. He was really important actually, because he speaks so well about mental health, and the struggles he’s had with his illness and finishing playing football.
"I think having someone like him talking, it helped people who might have been struggling with their own mental health during lockdown.”
Jackie remembers the day Liverpool’s Premier League title win was confirmed, last June.
“I called my dad,” she says. “I’ve been going to Anfield with him all my life, and we were both in tears down the phone.
“He said to me ‘Do you think we’ll ever be able to go to the match together again?’, and it just broke my heart. I really hope we can. I haven’t been back to Liverpool since the pandemic, but I hope to be able to before Christmas.
“I love European football. Every Liverpool fan does. But more than anything, I want us to win the league again so people can celebrate it properly and be together for it.
“That’s what Liverpool is, that’s what Liverpool is about.”
Jesus agrees.
“Big things are coming, I can feel it,” he says, shortly before heading off to the Wanda.
A few hours later, after the Reds’ dramatic 3-2 win, a text arrives. “Ohhhhhh yeahhhhh!” it reads. “It’s good to be back!”
Who could argue with that?
