{"id":78109,"date":"2025-05-06T03:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T03:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/78109\/"},"modified":"2025-05-06T03:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T03:30:09","slug":"best-in-england-an-underrated-element-of-liverpools-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/78109\/","title":{"rendered":"Best in England: An Underrated Element of Liverpool\u2019s Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

The outpouring of celebration that\u2019s been happening from Sunday\u2019s confirmation of Liverpool<\/a>\u2019s 20th league title is a bit because we were unable to celebrate the last one due to COVID restrictions, and a bit because it\u2019s always going to be a party for these supporters at any time and any place. It\u2019s who we are.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, there\u2019s been a lot of ongoing discussion on questions of the \u201cmost successful\u201d club in English football, with Manchester United<\/a> firmly taking a step back after years of back and forth. Both clubs have won 20 league titles, and Liverpool\u2019s six European cups trounce Manchester United\u2019s record of three. <\/p>\n

Even Gary Neville agrees<\/a> 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 \u2014 indeed, there\u2019s a solid argument that some of the losing years under J\u00fcrgen Klopp were just as fun as the ones with the big cups at the end if we\u2019re talking about memories and stories and times spent watching the Reds.<\/p>\n

But silverware helps us remember things, and it helps us place our memories in time because it\u2019s google-able, plottable \u2014 it functions as collective pinpoints on our shared timelines of support. More than anything, it\u2019s a massive let-off for the building anticipation and joy that dissipates (but isn\u2019t erased) when you fail to cross the final finish line. It makes that building joy real.<\/p>\n

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 \u201c30 years of hurt\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cChampions\u201d sung and clapped in our specific way, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

This is a description of spoils, not of barrenness; we are not Leicester City<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

When we sing about having \u201cseen things you\u2019ve never seen\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Liverpool have never finished below eighth in the Premier League; despite the reports of \u201c30 years of hurt,\u201d 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\u2019t sustainable, but it still felt a bit like coming home. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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 \u201cbarren years\u201d that were missing only a league title, really. I argue with them when they tell me that Klopp\u2019s 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\u2019ve seen them protest their ownership for sustained disregard to them and their club, and I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful for how much fun I\u2019ve had supporting Liverpool over the course of my time as a Red, and while I am incandescent at the moment, I don\u2019t know what the future holds. We\u2019re in transition, still, even if we\u2019re 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\u2019s silly, but United post-Ferguson feels miserable in a way I never truly felt \u2014 perhaps because though we didn\u2019t 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). <\/p>\n

And I hated them, truly, but I don\u2019t remember feeling miserable most of that time. We have been lucky, truly lucky. What I feel most grateful for is that I\u2019ve never been allowed to become complacent in the ways our elders speak of the 1970s and 1980s. In a strange way I\u2019m grateful Manchester City<\/a> in this iteration exist, because I\u2019ve got to see the best Liverpool team I could ever imagine play for over a decade now, but strangely we haven\u2019t won enough to make me feel like winning is a given. I would rather they disappear of course, but can\u2019t help but wonder if our parades would be as special if we had one to celebrate loads of silverware every year. Maybe we\u2019d stop selling out cup matches as well (I doubt it strongly, but then you never know; we\u2019ve not experienced it).<\/p>\n

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\u2019s no title on the line, we start staying nonetheless (and we would never leave with something on the line).<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 and Liverpool the city more broadly \u2014 is something truly special, and it\u2019s unlike anywhere else. <\/p>\n

\u201cIMAGINE BEING US\u201d the banner read as we lost 3-1 in London, and then carried on partying anyways. Because it doesn\u2019t matter. The unimaginable highs like these are the pinnacle of what this means, but so is every other celebration of every other silverware we\u2019ve accomplished, and so is every night and day out for the ones we\u2019ve 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\u2019re 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 \u2014 and let us never forget it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The outpouring of celebration that\u2019s been happening from Sunday\u2019s confirmation of Liverpool\u2019s 20th league title is a bit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[24560,2703,748,38234,393,162,163,4884,256,38237,179,38236,38238,38239,3577,38235,2955,3188,5598,16,11965,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-78109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-an","9":"tag-best","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-element","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-english-premier-league","14":"tag-front-page","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-in","17":"tag-league-capital-one-cup","18":"tag-liverpool","19":"tag-liverpool-champions-league-coverage","20":"tag-liverpool-europa-league-coverage","21":"tag-liverpool-fa-cup-coverage","22":"tag-of","23":"tag-offside","24":"tag-s","25":"tag-success","26":"tag-the","27":"tag-uk","28":"tag-underrated","29":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114458776276340797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}