When They Were Boys Read Online Free

Liverpool Football Club was born. By the year 2000, Liverpool F.C. was declared the most successful English soccer team of the twentieth century. Yet, the team was not the first one established in the city. Over a decade earlier, in 1878, Everton F.C. was founded. And today the two teams’ respective stadiums sit right across the way from each other. The Liverpool team is known as the “Reds,” and Everton is the “Blues.” For many years the teams were divided by religions—the “Reds” were viewed as the Protestant team, the “Blues” as the Catholics. Indeed, Liverpool is one of the few cities in the world with two massive cathedrals, Protestant and Catholic, tall and becoming, facing off each other in a neighborhood not far from where the Beatles went to school.
    Many years after soccer arrived, another major arrival would change the fate of a city and the world. This was, of course, the arrival of the guitar boys, who in 1957 replaced the banjo and washboard stars they had worshipped. A teenage band, in raw form, arrived on the scene through a circuitous journey, on streets hardly paved with gold, but rather lined with the trapdoors and quicksand of decision, fate, and competition. The surviving four boys of the band never wavered in their meteoric rise to immortality. It is an irony that in today’s Liverpool, many of the younger generation embrace these boys with less intensity than the rest of the world, but ask any one of them which four men made the greatest statement of independence to the elites of the English south, and they know exactly where their modern-day heritage was born.
    Yes, it is a city of contrasts and great pride, and like all cities, was founded on illustrious contradictions.
    The city’s eponymous soccer club earned its success in no small part by the spirit of its fans. Generations of Liverpool fans and players have movedthrough the sacred grass of Anfield, their home from the beginning. And in the modern era, the team and players have marched to the beat of their theme song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” borrowed from the musical Carousel .
    The song was recorded by Gerry Marsden, the leader of Gerry and the Pacemakers. Although Marsden lived in the shadow of the Beatles, he had a successful career in his own right, and is beloved by Liverpool soccer fans for the song, which is, in itself, a major contradiction. Marsden may be the voice of the “Reds,” but it is said that he was actually a fan of the “Blues” until he was thirteen. Fans will rarely walk into each other’s stadiums, but when it comes to Marsden’s soccer preferences, no one really cares.
    But to all others: beware. These are sacred grounds, and one should never enter the wrong turf. The Reds and the Blues play in separate stadiums, facing each other, just like the towering cathedrals. Each stadium holds over 40,000 fans. The economies of modern communities suggest a single stadium could better serve both fan bases. But to date, loyalty and sacred heritage are more important than money.
    It is true that a soccer fan never walks alone in Liverpool, just as the besieged residents of the war’s blitz knew that their backs, if not their houses, were covered. The friendliness of the people even today is catching. I have never met a cabdriver in Liverpool who didn’t ask where I was from, nor did any man or woman ever balk when I walked up to ask directions. I have never seen such a city where happiness is not bounded by social or economic standing. People may call you “luv” and, believe me, they really mean it. The accent is thick with a slightly Irish brogue, and sometimes it is hard for the visitor to understand. So, on occasion, you have to ask, “Can you please repeat that?” And they do, willingly.
    In Liverpool, no one ever really walks alone.
    The people who endured the bombings, the postwar mothers and fathers who