Never Walk Alone, they call them, after winning the Premier League game against Manchester City it gave Liverpool the motivation to win the title. Liverpool have waited 24 years to win the EPL, which it last won in 1990.
They sang, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “We Shall Not Be Moved” and, over and over, “Liverpool.” The fans at Anfield seemed never to go quiet once the game began on Sunday, and soon, perhaps, they will sing about being champions.
That was the measure of Liverpool’s 3-2 victory over visiting Manchester City, a spirited and intense game that had all the ingredients of a classic: goals, drama and atmosphere in bunches.
The Reds scored two goals early, but City came back with two goals, threatening to ruin the day for the home team. Then Philippe Coutinho pounced on a loose ball and buried a shot in the 78th minute, giving rise to this reality: If Liverpool wins its four remaining games, it will claim the title in England’s top league for the first time since 1990.
Coutinho pounced on a loose ball and buried the shot in the 78th minute
When Sunday’s game was over, Steven Gerrard, Liverpool’s captain, gathered his teammates. The players threw their arms around one another; Gerrard blinked away tears as he addressed them.
“That was the biggest statement we’ve made so far,” Gerrard said later. “That was the longest 90 minutes I’ve probably ever played in. It felt like the clock was going backwards during parts of that game.”
The expectation for the match was immense. Fans packed trains out of London’s Euston station early Sunday, spilling out of the cars and into the vestibules during the three-hour journey to Anfield.
When they arrived in Merseyside, they found pubs packed to the brim and scalpers roaming the streets; tickets normally priced at £52 (roughly $87) were being peddled online for as much as $4,200. Most observers labeled it the biggest league match at Anfield in nearly a quarter of a century.
Emotions were running high even before kickoff. A memorial service was held on Tuesday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster, in which 96 fans died, and Sunday’s prematch ceremonies included a minute’s silence, the presentation of a wreath of flowers from Manchester City and a stunning mosaic reading, “96 — 25 years,” which was displayed in the famed Kop end. The game began at 1:37 p.m., seven minutes late, because the 1989 F.A. Cup semifinal in which the catastrophe occurred was stopped after six minutes.
