The outpouring of celebration that’s been happening from Sunday’s confirmation of Liverpool’s 20th league title is a bit because we were unable to celebrate the last one due to COVID restrictions, and a bit because it’s always going to be a party for these supporters at any time and any place. It’s who we are.
Behind the scenes, there’s been a lot of ongoing discussion on questions of the “most successful” club in English football, with Manchester United firmly taking a step back after years of back and forth. Both clubs have won 20 league titles, and Liverpool’s six European cups trounce Manchester United’s record of three.
Even Gary Neville agrees that Liverpool are now the most successful English club, but silverware itself does not tell the full story: football is about weekly experiences and journeys along the way, not just the silverware at the end — indeed, there’s a solid argument that some of the losing years under Jürgen Klopp were just as fun as the ones with the big cups at the end if we’re talking about memories and stories and times spent watching the Reds.
But silverware helps us remember things, and it helps us place our memories in time because it’s google-able, plottable — it functions as collective pinpoints on our shared timelines of support. More than anything, it’s a massive let-off for the building anticipation and joy that dissipates (but isn’t erased) when you fail to cross the final finish line. It makes that building joy real.
The anticipation along the way is very real, too, though. Liverpool have total numbers over Manchester United, but we also have something else: though much has been said about “30 years of hurt” and many of us recall childhoods blighted by their dominance, Liverpool were only barren in the league. Though previous ownership took the Reds to a true lowpoint, if we look at timelines hashed out by silverware, Liverpool supporters have been uniquely spoiled across generations.
Since the 1970s, Liverpool have not gone a decade without a major trophy, even if the league dominance of the 1970s through to 1990 completely disappeared. Liverpool have rarely gone five years without serious silverware, to say nothing about the nearly-wons. Though many of us were moved to tears to hear “Champions” sung and clapped in our specific way, it’s because this alone is the only trophy some of us do not have living memory of. These chants, specifically, are alien to us, and that makes them all the more special.
This is a description of spoils, not of barrenness; we are not Leicester City celebrating a truly remarkable title win, we are family welcoming a loved one home after too long without them. We are spoiled, in other words, but not so spoiled that these accolades lack meaning.
When we sing about having “seen things you’ve never seen” it rings true: every generation has had stories, had memories, had joys. While Manchester United had the league in a stranglehold in the 1990s and through the 2000s, they had occasional domestic cup runs to sustain them from their previous big decades from the 1950s-60s; Liverpool were a mess off and on, but had serious exploits in Europe, winning in Istanbul and also bringing home a European Cup in 2000/01.
Liverpool have never finished below eighth in the Premier League; despite the reports of “30 years of hurt,” the lived experience of these years was rather optimistic: Europe was always in sight and a league title never felt likely but never truly out of sight either: the excitement of 2013/14 felt right more than it felt unprecedented at the time. It wasn’t sustainable, but it still felt a bit like coming home.
I’m sure Manchester United fans would argue with me here, because I argue with them when they discuss the assured pessimism they assume came along with supporting Liverpool over the “barren years” that were missing only a league title, really. I argue with them when they tell me that Klopp’s last year was a massive disappointment, rather than a joyous ride that could have ending in a quadruple but instead, due to a week of play, ended with just the one trophy and two quarter-finals and a third-placed league finish. Only that. But I’ve seen them protest their ownership for sustained disregard to them and their club, and I’ve seen their side get turned over by mine repeatedly in ways I never saw when Liverpool were a shadow of themselves and United were flying.
I’m grateful for how much fun I’ve had supporting Liverpool over the course of my time as a Red, and while I am incandescent at the moment, I don’t know what the future holds. We’re in transition, still, even if we’re in transition as title-holders. Yet Manchester United might manage qualification for Europe this season despite being so abject they sit in 15th, on 39 points after 35 matches have been played. I spent a large chunk of my supporting life being told I was miserable, as the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United saw themselves plucked from irrelevance with an influx of questionable money, while Manchester United won and won and won again. It’s silly, but United post-Ferguson feels miserable in a way I never truly felt — perhaps because though we didn’t win the league and won other silverware we still often gave the league a real go (I have firm memories of peak Fernando Torres years that feel like gems in my mind).
And I hated them, truly, but I don’t remember feeling miserable most of that time. We have been lucky, truly lucky. What I feel most grateful for is that I’ve never been allowed to become complacent in the ways our elders speak of the 1970s and 1980s. In a strange way I’m grateful Manchester City in this iteration exist, because I’ve got to see the best Liverpool team I could ever imagine play for over a decade now, but strangely we haven’t won enough to make me feel like winning is a given. I would rather they disappear of course, but can’t help but wonder if our parades would be as special if we had one to celebrate loads of silverware every year. Maybe we’d stop selling out cup matches as well (I doubt it strongly, but then you never know; we’ve not experienced it).
I think our history is part of why Anfield sells out regardless, why allocations get filled, and why when a manager chastises us for leaving early when there’s no title on the line, we start staying nonetheless (and we would never leave with something on the line).
I am grateful for us, and I am grateful for what I have witnessed in my lifetime and heard about from before it. So much of what this club has to offer is special, and I hope we never take it for granted. I hope we get our decades of dominance again, because goodness knows our players deserve it. But more than that, I hope we never collectively take any of this for granted. Liverpool Football Club — and Liverpool the city more broadly — is something truly special, and it’s unlike anywhere else.
“IMAGINE BEING US” the banner read as we lost 3-1 in London, and then carried on partying anyways. Because it doesn’t matter. The unimaginable highs like these are the pinnacle of what this means, but so is every other celebration of every other silverware we’ve accomplished, and so is every night and day out for the ones we’ve lost. Vincent Kompany scoring a goal he never could have imagined scoring certainly takes a title from us, but it cannot take the memories of the almost. And the only thing better than almost is reaching the pinnacle. We’re spoiled when we get a record points tally and still lose, because winning that much is not something many others get to witness. Liverpool supporters have been spoiled for moments, and spoiled for whole seasons as well — and let us never forget it.