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The Friendly Derby? Well, Everton-Liverpool Is Friendlier
LIVERPOOL, England — European soccer rivalries have long been blamed for a variety of extreme circumstances, from deaths and vandalism to the lobbing of flares and the occasional appearance of a pig’s severed head. Rarely, however, do they split a family at Sunday dinner. Except here.
On Merseyside, as this region of northwest England is known, the rivalry between Liverpool and Everton has always been different. If the standard-issue European rivalry is something akin to street-gang warfare, the Liverpool-Everton relationship is more like two brothers who constantly bicker over who has the better car.
“Look, we don’t like each other — it’s not as soft as some might think,” said Stephen Hidderley, a taxi driver who proudly dangles a Liverpool crest from his rearview mirror. “But it’s not like those other cities. There are too many families that cross over — my cousin is an Evertonian.”
He added: “I love him, of course, and so I don’t hit him. But let me tell you, I don’t invite him over for supper every week.”
From left, Anthony Scotland and his uncle Fred Kennerley are Everton fans, while two of Kennerley’s sons, Paul and Sean, root for Liverpool.
This is not to say that the Merseyside derby cannot turn ugly; important games like Tuesday’s, when Everton, which is sixth in England’s Premier League, will visit fourth-place Liverpool at the Reds’ Anfield stadium, have had their share of fan fights and nastiness, as well as a recent spate of red cards on the field. “During the games, it’s not buddy-buddy,” said Tim Howard, the longtime Everton goalkeeper.
Still, little of it comes close to the ill will and violence often seen in the powder-keg rivalries of, say, Turkey or Italy or Spain, where the Portuguese star Luís Figo was the target of a slain swine slung from the stands after switching sides in the Barcelona-Real Madrid Clásico.
Even the nickname here connotes a more genial sentiment. While some rivalries around Europe have memorable labels, like Scotland’s Old Firm (Rangers versus Celtic) and Greece’s sublimely named Derby of Eternal Enemies (Panathinaikos versus Olympiakos), the Liverpool-Everton matches are known by a tamer and, one might even say, cuddly sobriquet: the Friendly Derby.
Fans on both sides are not necessarily thrilled with that cozy title, but even the most passionate among them generally acknowledges that the city’s unusual blending of red (Liverpool) and blue (Everton) makes the feeling here unique.
“There’s rivalry, absolutely, but there’s no hatred,” Fred Kennerley, 58, a longtime Evertonian, said during an interview in his living room this weekend. “It’s not like Manchester, with United and City, where it’s like straight down the middle. Here, there are a lot of families like mine.”
He pointed to his sons and sighed. Fred is a blue. His eldest son, Paul, is a red. His middle son, Mark, is a blue. His youngest son, Sean, is a red. Fred’s wife, Margaret, comes from a family of reds — her brothers were largely responsible for co-opting Paul and Sean — but she swore that she was the pinnacle of neutrality. “Most of the time, I just hope they’ll talk about something else,” she said.
Fred said he had no regrets about exposing his children to matches at both Anfield and Goodison Park, Everton’s home ground, when they were boys. But Paul, 38, now has two young sons, and he stressed that he had already determined they would support Liverpool.
“It’s better for them this way,” he said, smirking at his cousin Anthony Scotland, sitting next to him. Scotland is a blue, and so he is well aware that while the clubs have hovered near each other in the standings in recent years, Liverpool is more successful over all, both in England and in Europe, with 18 top-division titles to Everton’s nine, and five European championships to Everton’s zero.
Scotland glowered.
“He doesn’t like to talk about the time we put an Everton scarf on one of his babies and took a picture,” Scotland said. “He about hit the roof over that.”
Scotland, 29, considers himself a connoisseur of the Liverpool-Everton tangle. He works with a friend, Anthony Dunn (a staunch red), on a popular website devoted to the rivalry known as The Mersey Juror.
The pleasant nature of the rivalry is a point of a pride for Scotland. He talks proudly about how fans at the derby matches are not forcibly segregated, pointing out that while British law allows stadium officials to remove any visiting fans sitting in the home fans’ section, with so many mixed families in Liverpool, one will frequently see a blue shirt in a sea of red, or vice versa.
As long as the outlier does not incite any trouble with the other side, Fred Kennerley said, rival fans are free to watch the game together.
“I’d say there’s about the same chance of trouble at a derby match as there is with any other visiting fans,” said Kennerley, who works as a steward at Everton home games. “That’s unusual; usually, you would think it would be more.”
It is difficult to say why Liverpool enjoys this relative peace. Most intracity rivalries in soccer are based on geography or economic background or religion; figuring out which side someone favors is generally an easy proposition, and tensions between the groups often run at a low boil.
Here, though, there is no obvious way to tell a Kopite (Liverpool fan) from a blue nose (Everton fan) on first meeting. The clubs’ histories are intertwined — Everton played at Anfield from 1884 to 1892 before leaving over a rent dispute, which then led to the formation of Liverpool F.C. Today, Liverpool fans respect the feel of Goodison Park, while Everton fans generally admit that there is no place quite like Anfield when it comes to singing. “They do have better songs,” Scotland allowed.
The team’s stadiums are just across a park from one another — Stanley Park, a beautiful green space, serves as the city’s figurative Switzerland — and that proximity has bred more familiarity than contempt.
Fans on both sides still remember the so-called mile of scarves, a touching tribute following the Hillsborough stadium disaster of 1989, when 96 Liverpool fans were killed. Evertonians, many of them related to Liverpool fans who died, joined with Liverpudlians to tie club scarves together across the space between Goodison Park and Anfield.
Recently, there have been proposals from both clubs regarding changes to their stadiums. Liverpool wants a new Anfield; Everton has long considered moving, perhaps even to a stadium outside the city limits.
Regardless of what happens, though, the rivalry will remain fierce but familial. It has always been that way.
“It’s just something you can always banter about,” Fred Kennerley said. “It’s good fun — especially when Liverpool lose.”