The greatest tribute to Goodison is that it is being superseded, not by a cost-cutting supermarket shed in Kirkby, but by a magnificent state-of-the-art cityscape landmark on the river.
That's a fitting way to bow out, to secure the club's future. Goodison is a magnificent museum, but it is of the past and Everton, as an institution, has, too often in the modern era, been of the past. In some ways, Goodison passed away at the onset of the Premier League. It never regained the stature it had up to the end of the 1980s. By Euro 96, it was a relic. I'll miss it, but we'll always have the memories and now, for the first time in a generation, we also have hope of making new ones.
A final point: a club the stature of Everton really only exisits to compete and win. Our history at Goodison demands that the club succeeds. Young fans may find this hard to believe, but you could quite easily erase the last 25 years from any "history of Everton" DVD and, well, still have pretty much all of the club's historic highlights. Essentially, nothing of genuine note has happened in the club's storied fable since we won the FA Cup in 1995. The next entry would be the building of the new stadium (unless Carlo works the oracle). That is a damning indictment of what has gone between. This club has been a shadow of its former self for a generation. We used to win things, break records, and establish firsts. Time to open the next chapter.
