Football Fan Culture in Liverpool: A City Built Around Its Clubs

Walk through Liverpool on any matchday and the whole city seems to be completely overrun by football. Every person wears a red or blue scarf, street vendors and shops sell replica shirts, and conversations in every pub turn to whoever is playing that afternoon.

A City of Sport

Football sits at the centre of Liverpool’s identity, but it’s often forgotten that it has never had the city entirely to itself. Aintree hosts the world-famous Grand National every spring, while boxing and mixed martial arts have both long produced champions out of the city’s gyms. 

Rugby also runs to a calendar all its own, with Liverpool FC, founded in 1857 on Liverpool Cricket Ground, and according to RugbyPass, is recognised as the world’s oldest open rugby club. None of it, though, has ever rivalled what happens on a Saturday afternoon at Anfield or Goodison.

The Rituals Before Kick-Off

Matchday starts hours before the first whistle, and the city’s many pubs is usually where it begins. The Sandon, however, is special as the site where the formation documents for LFC were signed. 

The Sandon’s bowls pavilion, tucked behind the main building on Oakfield Road, doubled as the dressing room for both Everton and Liverpool players in the club’s earliest years, long before either side had a proper stand to change in, let alone a tunnel to walk out through.

The Albert and The Park do the same job for supporters making the same walk since childhood, often alongside parents who made it before them. Inside the ground, the Kop rises to sing You’ll Never Walk Alone before every kick-off, a moment that still catches even lifelong regulars off guard.

Two Clubs, One City

For 133 years, Goodison Park and Anfield sat less than a mile apart, close enough that the split which created them still showed on a map every derby day, with fans crossing Stanley Park in both directions before kick-off. 

Everton’s move to Bramley-Moore Dock in 2025 ended that proximity, but not the story behind it which is now marked by a plaque of the exact site of the 1892 meeting where Everton’s board voted to leave Houlding and his ground behind.

More Than Ninety Minutes

Aintree draws the world for one weekend every spring, cameras and crowds descending on the city before moving on to wherever comes next. Liverpool does something similar for every fixture of the season, whatever the weather. When the stadiums empty out, the pubs stay full a while longer, and by Monday the whole thing has already started building toward the next one.