The Liverpool supporters had sung about winning the Premier League title in Goodison Park. Instead, James Tarkowski produced a goal that, according to David Moyes, will be “remembered” to earn a dramatic draw for Everton.
It was the least that Everton earned, even if the fact that the clock was checked in the eighth minute of the added time made it indigestible for Arne Slot. In reality this night never found his Liverpool team. This old stadium can still do strange things on sides.
The topography influences the senses. Bramley-Moore Dock is not even two miles away, but might as well be a different world with its wide, open spaces, the Mersey on his back. Goodison, a whispering away with his terrace -shaped houses, is compared to claustrophobic.
Slot and his players felt it. Everyone did it. Pitch invasions and torches, red cards and raw emotions, it is all part of it, all part of this fixture here. “It has always been a great ground if you get the crowd behind you,” said Davie Moyes. How Everton will miss the old place.
They will not experience that much longer, of course, the approaching movement through the city that offers the background for this game. The knowledge that Everton and Liverpool will never do this again in this famous stadium has infected the atmosphere throughout the evening.
The Serendipity that led us here added on the occasion. This was planned like a kick-off of lunch, but for the cold explosion that the original fixture postponed. That was no way for this place to say goodbye to the Merseyside Derby. This felt more appropriate.
Goodison, literally in view of the fact that it was the first specially built football stadium in the country, was made for games like this. From closing the wooden seats to the heads that cranes around pillars, it has become an anachronism, but still wears it well.
For those in the Lower Bums, the best indication of those Jordan Pickford High Balls comes up again from sight only come from the movements of the players. It is a unique experience, but how others would enjoy such things, enjoy such history.
If the new stadium in Bramley-Moore Dock is a spaceship, Goodison is a cathedral, complete with its own holy trinity. And what is a club anyway, if not the stadium and the sights, sounds and scents that go with it. Players change but memories continue to exist.
Neville Southall is no longer between the posts, but that does not stop fans who proposes his double salvation by Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge or introduces himself a large Scottish striker of the past – take your choice – down a header while the crowd rises behind.
In 1991 there will be his memories at Derby Night in 1991. Even the events long before that still resonates. This is where Dixie Dean scored 60 goals almost a century ago in one season, a location that hosted before 1966 and such.
Just like with the ship of Thoseus, Logic tells us that peat has long since disappeared, but this is still holy ground, the place where supporters gathered in celebration after they escaped Wimbledon in 1994, Coventry in 1998 and Crystal Palace in 2022 .
The supporters just hurt that moment.
It was unlikely with a thunderous strike of the right boot from Tarkowski, the kick that is intended to be played a million times, certainly career-defined even for a thus. “It doesn't happen that often in football,” said Moyes. “But it did tonight.”
In his own way it was more than Everton hoped.
The old line about Everton never seems so clear, it is one of the pleasant fictions of football. Proponents return to their home bus in the hope of that special moment to add to the folklore, but knowing that it is unlikely that those nights do not come easily or often.
Certainly not against Liverpool. Last season's victory ended an almost 14-year waiting time for a home win in the game, the first since the days of the first spell of Moyes to lead. In the past 30 years, Everton Liverpool has only defeated here six times. Four of them under the shot.
Beto made them dream of a fifth, perhaps his own mini chapter to this rivalry, with the coolest finishes in the hottest atmosphere. It was also smart work by Jarrad Branthwaite, a memory that Everton is not all blood and thunder under Moyes.
But then Liverpool did what they tend to do, finding a way to ruin the night of Everton, and the more pessimistic under the home support would have seen that as an appropriate goal. Typical. Cue scored the last Premier League goal in the Merseyside Derby.
Moyes still pointed to the way the fans remained until the end. Eventually they stayed long after, the stewards that supporters were to the outputs while entire families looked out of the grass, enthusiastic to get every last detail from a special evening.
“The support was incredible. I think it was appropriate that they got the end they were doing.” There are more than 52,000 reasons why Bramley-Moore Dock is the future, but this was about the present and the past. And the gift of another memory thanks to Goodison Park.
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