Why Don’t Liverpool & Everton Share a Stadium?
Although there are some examples of fierce rivals sharing a stadium, with AC Milan and Inter Milan being the most obvious case, it isn’t all that common for two football clubs to have the same home. Ground-sharing does happen from time to time, but it is usually only on a temporary basis when one club’s home is being redeveloped or improved.
It is much rarer for clubs to actively seek to have a home that two of them can use. When those clubs are bitter rivals, as is the case with Liverpool and Everton, it becomes much harder to imagine a world in which they share the same stadium, having the insignia of the two teams all over the building.
The 2003 Suggestion
The notion of Liverpool and Everton sharing a stadium was first proposed with any sort of seriousness back in 2003. At the time, the Red side of the city was in the process of moving to a new stadium that was to be built in Stanley Park. The Blues, meanwhile, had plans in place for a state-of-the-art stadium at the King’s Dock, only for that to fall apart over funding. As a result, Liverpool City Council said that money could be made available for a stadium to be built provided certain conditions were met, with one of them being that Liverpool and Everton share the new football ground once it had been built; much to the disgust of fans.
It was an idea that was immediately rejected by both sets of supporters, with neither club overly keen on moving in with the other one. For Evertonians, part of the problem was the fact that they were effectively being asked to move into the ground that Liverpool were building, whilst Reds were unhappy at the idea of Everton piggybacking onto their new ground. The idea came around again in 2009 when Liverpool was trying to be part of the bid for England to host the 2018 World Cup, owing to the fact that neither Goodison Park nor Anfield met the criteria for FIFA to allow them to be one of the host stadiums for the competition.
FIFA requires a stadium to have 40,000 or more seats that are available to the paying public, therefore not including VIP areas, which Goodison definitely couldn’t comply with and Anfield would have struggled with. The result of that was the Northwest Regional Development Agency feeling as though a new stadium would be the only solution. Having 60,000-plus seats available in the new ground would’ve made it possible for it to be selected as a host stadium for any bid. In the end, of course, the 2018 World Cup was hosted by Russia, with Qatar winning the right to host the tournament four years later, in spite of the country’s appalling human rights record.
What Happened in Liverpool
In the end, of course, no shared stadium happened in Liverpool. Whilst it always seemed unlikely, major changes for both the Reds and Blues resulted in the two clubs effectively getting new stadiums of their own. For Liverpool, it wasn’t a new stadium so much as it was a redeveloped Anfield, which was a much better solution for supporters who didn’t want the club to leave its spiritual home. Everton, meanwhile, managed to avoid a situation where the club moved to Kirkby, as was suggested at one point, and instead ended up building a stadium at Bramley-Moor Dock as had been mooted two decades earlier but failed owing to finance.
@woodworkermcr #liverpool #everton #evertonfc I went to Liverpool for the day to help out on a job at the friends of Allenby docks #fyp #fypシ #foryoupage #screammovie
At Anfield, the first part of the ground that was redeveloped was the Main Stand. Plans were revealed in the April of 2014, seeing a third tier added to the ground as well as enhanced corporate facilities and areas for supporters to use on a match day. All of the houses on Lothair Road were demolished, in addition to some on Alroy Road and Anfield Road in order to make way for the new-look stand. Work began on the eight of December 2014, with Carillion, the construction company, managing to build the majority of the new stand whilst the old one was still in use. The original Main Stand was demolished in the summer of 2016.
Jurgen Klopp marked work officially getting underway on Liverpool’s Anfield Road Stand redevelopment project, with a ground-breaking ceremony to celebrate the eventual growth of the stadium to 61,000 capacity 🏟️ pic.twitter.com/yitYlzxMHI
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 1, 2021
The stand opened in time for the first home game of the 2016-2017 season to take place on the ninth of September 2016, with the Reds defeating Leicester City 4-1. There was also internal construction that happened, resulting in new changing rooms and media facilities being opened in the April of 2017. That wasn’t the end of the redevelopment of Anfield, however. The second phase saw the Anfield Road End also changed, with the initial plans being for the addition of just shy of 5,000 seats. Those plans lapsed, however, with ‘ambitious new plans’ being put in place instead. That saw Anfield grow to have a capacity of more than 60,000.
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For Everton, meanwhile, the plans was to build a ‘stunning new stadium fit to grace Liverpool’s famous waterfront’. Promising an eye-catching design that would allow for 52,888 supporters to turn up and watch the Blues, the Bramley-Moor Dock development offers a combination of steel, glass and brick to compliment the surrounding architecture. The plan was to get the new stadium opened in time for the 2025-2026 season, transforming the Mersey waterfront in a dramatic way with the venue. The dock had to be drained and then filled, allowing the foundations to be put in and offering a £1 billion boost to the city’s economy.
