At a lunch spot in Liverpool's Castle Street on Monday, we again approved Ian Rush with an image of himself posing in an Everton shirt.
It was a stunt from April Fools for Shoot Magazine from 1989, who introduced him at Melwood Training Ground of Liverpool and SuperPossed Blue 'Goodison' in the background to make it look like their 'World Exclusive' – 'Rush Signs for Everton' – Was ready.
Rush, a shoot columnist at that time, was certainly not secretly the royal blue shirt on Liverpool FC soil that day at Liverpool FC was attracted that day. “Bob Paisley didn't know,” he told me. “It would have been interesting to see his reaction if he had seen me.”
And neither of them had Peter Reid, his one -off opponent in the city who was with us. It was the thought of the protest that nowadays such an image would provoke that they would have two chuckled – and they certainly had a point. Can you imagine the reaction if Mo Salah is written down somewhere in an Everton shirt?
“I jumped on the idea and many fans bought it,” said Rush. 'But imagine you do it now? I don't think you would get away with it. There would be a collapse with social media. It would explode. '
Four or five hours in the company of Rush and Reid, which brought them together one last time in Goodison Park on Wednesday evening for the last Merseyside Derby of the stadium, was the food for the soul. A memory that the casual hatred that the game nowadays stops, with clubs that live in constant fear of a form of mortal reputation damage ', is not the natural state of football.
During lunch, how many Evertonians played for Liverpool and vice versa. Jamie Carragher, Michael Owen, Steve McManaman, Steve McMahon and Robbie Fowler were all Boyhood Blues, just like Rush – who was at Liverpool at Liverpool at Liverpool, three months after Everton Manager Gordon Lee broke his heart by not signing him .
The players of the two parties were so much closer at the time. Adrian Heath by Everton and Sammy Lee from Liverpool were good friends. Mike Lyons and Phil Thompson, the captains who entered the 1980s, would have a bet at the start of the season on which the two games would end up higher in the table. The senior managers – Peter Robinson and Jim Greenwood from Liverpool in Everton – ensured that a deep mutual appreciation was running through the clubs.
Rush told me that he felt that Liverpool of Everton supporters saw three or four scousers in both teams' a form of resentment that has forged respect among fans for the rival side. For some, that now seems unthinkable.
Social media naturally accelerate hatred and vitriol – sending it around the houses in a way that was absent in those analogue days. But the heavier postures are a product of the changing demography, especially in Anfield, where so many more people arrive for games from outside the city and view
Everton as just another opponent – neither a rival nor a threat. Some on the Everton side of the gorge abolish that. For them, the remaining feeling of Cross-City Brotherhood has disappeared.
Occasionally we see proof of old relationships that unveiled those beautiful few hours with Rush and Reid. The deceased Everton chairman Bill Kenwright's moving speech during the Hillsborough Anniversary Remembrance Service 2013, for example, has not been forgotten.
“We get these moments that are a reminder of the bonds that used to be,” says Simon Hart, the journalist and author whose book Here We Go is a wonderful repetition of Everton's glorious eighties.
'But the Liverpool fan experience in recent years has been removed from Everton fans. Everton has passed this existential crisis and wondering if we are going to survive. In the 1980s, the fan experiences looked so much more alike. '
Everton's FA Cup exexit at home to Bournemouth last weekend means that waiting for a club from the club goes beyond 30 years. Liverpool won 16 trophies at that time. The last Goodison Derby on Wednesday evening has an enormous meaning. The side of Arne Slot is desperate to retain their push for the title by expanding their lead to nine points. Everton, revive under David Moyes, knows that a few slips can dive back into a fight to survive.
The fans of the winning team will get permanent bragging about their goodison -supremation, in which Liverpool and Everton have each won 41 Derby matches at Goodison, with 37 drawn. On Tuesday, on Tuesday, Moyes noted: “The most important thing is to win a victory to keep us in the Premier League.”
The destination of the local fans of the two clubs are intertwined, as always. Everton's move to a stadium on the banks of the Mersey near Bramley-Moore Dock proves a catalyst for the most important regeneration of the dockside in the city since the redevelopment of the Albert Dock in the 1980s.
Everyone in the city will benefit from the shared wealth.
Just don't try to tell that to the contemporary distribution of bile and resentment. One of them was more interested in filming Reid after taking a few drinks on Monday evening and sharing the images on X. Reid laughed that off, but it will be stabbed. More proof that nobody would dare to do Salah somewhere near an Everton shirt.
More proof Sir Jim is from his depth
The chance of Sir Jim Ratcliffe connects relationships with almost every elite sports team that he hardly touches, has to point out. The All Blacks now continue Ineos for the premature termination of a six -year commercial relationship.
I have raised Sir Jim's a lot of blown opinion about himself more than once. If you can be confronted by the book Grit, Strenging & Humor:
The Ineos story, an annoying hagiography that Sir Jim likes to show in some of his offices, you get the photo. After Sir Ben Ainslie has announced that he does not judge his sails so much and one of the big teams in world sport did not respond, this seems a moment for home truths.
I am sorry, Sir Jim, but success in sport is more complicated than Fracking. In the meantime, God helps Manchester United.
Kerr -process is concerned about the police
The process and acquittal of Sam Kerr, the women's footballer of Chelsea, accused of racial harassment of a with -officer, suggests that the police have lost their senses.
The jury was asked to believe that the male officer, poor flower, felt 'alarm or intimidation' because Kerr called him 'white and stupid'.
Injured feelings that he initially forgot to mention. Kerr immediately apologized. That should have been the end.
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