Liverpool FC: The 30 Year Wait

This was a moment 30 years in the making.

For Liverpool, the wait..

...is over!

Champions of England again!

Liverpool had been relentless in their quest to return to the top

of the English game.

Firmino. Brilliant!

Salah. That is simply awesome!

And masterminding their return...

A brilliant manager in a mould all of his own.

I'm the normal one, maybe if you want this.

I couldn't be more proud

on the way we did it.

Being so patient for 30 years.

Roberto Firmino!

Mane!

The style of footballjurgen Klopp has implemented

has been breathtaking.

Salah charges towards him...

...and scores!

I always said from the first interview, I want to win

the Premier League with this club.

They were saying crazy but, yeah, we did it.

For three long decades,

Liverpool fans have watched on in agony as others

took their perch and revelled in it.

And despite winning ten cups in that time, it was always

the league that mattered most.

Even when you win the Champions League there were people

that told us winning the league would have meant more.

You don't find a club where you will hear that, actually,

apart from Liverpool.

It mattered because, alongside the highs of the '70s and '80s,

there were also tragedies,

dark days, which created a unique bond between the club and its fans.

The people have got special strength about them

to overcome the bad events.

The passion that you saw on the field is a direct result

of who our supporters are.

I think the personality of this team is a never—say—die attitude,

who are willing to fight for each other right until the very end.

This is the story of Liverpool's long road back

to the summit of English football...

You ask there and I look there.

...told by the people who helped shape the club we see today.

OK, ready?

It's ready.

SNAP!

CHEERING AND CHANTING

Liverpool are the champions

and the gladiators applaud the crowd.

I'm not going to tell you why they're going to win,

because they're going to win because they're the greatest.

Champions! Champions!

I don't think Liverpool would be where we are today,

except for Bill Shankly.

As soon as he opens his mouth,

it's pure heaven.

Well, I think that if a manager is honest,

he can't go into the field with the players.

He can convey it to the players.

He's with them and they're with him, and they'll be successful.

There was something about this guy that clicked with Liverpool.

And the cup belongs to Liverpool!

Shankly created a famous boot room culture which not only brought

success, but also a template for succession.

It's the people that make it, really, there's no magic.

No, there's no magic.

When Shanks retired, Bob Paisley took over.

Bob was a bit of a mumbler.

He's a bit hard to understand, I would think, in team meetings

and the like, isn't he? Pardon?

He's a bit hard... LAUGHTER

The Kop's spilling onto the pitch to celebrate

the victory and the championship.

Have you any more ambitions left in this game?

Yeah. Win it next year.

The teams of the '70s and the '80s

were absolutely phenomenal.

They were like a machine. They were winning everything.

Liverpool have retained the Football League championship.

42 league games, that's what it's all about.

Cup competitions — one-off things, really, aren't they?

But win the league, that's what football's all about.

Liverpool are European champions!

You can mention the word Europeanite, and I think

90% of football supporters in the world would think Liverpool.

It's business as usual for Liverpool,

the most successful club in the history of British football.

Joe Fagan had the drop. Your first year in charge,

and two trophies on the shelf already.

Incredible. I don't know how it's happened.

Don't ask me.

The sheer scale of Liverpool's dominance dwarfed anything

that had been seen previously in England.

Liverpool were the powerhouse of English football, winning 11

league titles in 18 years, as well as conquering Europe four times.

# Welcome to the Pleasuredome! #

It was in pursuit of a fifth European Cup that Liverpool endured

one of its darkest days.

For the last 50 minutes,

the Heysel Stadium in Brussels,

the capital of Belgium,

has been a sickening and bewildering sight.

We go on the pitch and they're throwing missiles at us,

the Juventus supporters.

So I picked one up, and I remember saying to Alan Kennedy,

"Nobody brings that into the stadium."

And he says, "That is the stadium."

Some Liverpool supporters moved into the Juventus area.

You can see the Juventus supporters trying to get over the wall

to our right and down towards the running track.

And it was the pressure of movement down towards the running track

which resulted in the wall giving way.

The first thing that needs to be said is that Liverpool fans

need to accept the blame for a lot of what happened that day.

There were many reasons for Heysel...

The stadium was shambles, the police were completely inept.

I was watching it on the television and thinking...

...this can't be happening.

And the terrible feeling of...

...responsibility.

And Liverpool's run of success in European Cup finals

comes to an end.

But this is not a night when football will be remembered.

There were no guidelines on how to recover

from such a disaster.

This was football's latest hooligan incident and it led to all English

clubs being banned from Europe.

It was a sad end for retiring manager joe Fagan.

The club needed a lift, so Fagan's successor wasn't from the boot room,

as was tradition, but the dressing room.

It was Liverpool's star player...

...Kenny Dalglish.

Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel

He is through!

Kenny Dalglish!

That is absolutely outstanding finishing!

Kenny came in and, all of a sudden,

we started to do a little bit about team shape.

We did a little bit about with the ball, without the ball.

Kenny, by that time, was, as he is now,

forever part of the fabric of this place.

And he knew what people wanted.

He knew what the people expected of the players.

And he just changed it because that's what he believed in.

But it wasn't a massive change.

In many ways, it was a good change

because it kind of changed with the times.

In his first season as player-manager,

Kenny led Liverpool to the double, even scoring the goal

that sealed the title.

And Dalglish is in here!

Yes!

The player-manager scores the goal

that may edge Liverpool nearer to their 16th championship!

# Feel the heat... #

I'd been at Watford for six years.

Lovely skill.

What a magnificent goal!

I was playing for England.

I was doing well. But Graham Taylor said to me, at a very young age,

I'll tell you when it's time to go and I'll tell you

where you should be going.

So when Liverpool came in, he said to me, "Liverpool have come in,

"that's the club for you. You're going to Liverpool."

# Get funky now... #

It's been made very easy for myself, Peter Beardsley, Ray Houghton.

Any of the new players who have come in, it's just been made easy for us.

Enola Gay by ELO

john Barnes joined Peter Beardsley and john Aldridge in Liverpool's

new front line for the '87-'88 season.

They played scintillating football.

Oh, look at Barnes here!

They're waiting for the full-back, Beardsley!

0h!

Aldridge is there! Aldridge!

I mean, the wonder of watching John Barnes.

He was just extraordinary.

Oh, Barnes has won it.

He won it from Brock.

He's got Beardsley going to his left, it's still Barnes!

That's a fabulous indefensible goal!

The biggest figure in the culture of the city was John Barnes,

a proud black man from Jamaica.

It broke down a load of barriers.

Those few years were just amazing.

Yeah, we were very spoilt.

Liverpool cruised to the title, winning it by nine points.

Both on and off the pitch,

the team were really on-song.

# Liverpool FC is as hard as hell

# United, Tottenham, Arsenal

# Watched my lips and I will spell

# Cos they don't just play but they can rap as well! #

Every time there was a cup final,

there was a song, and we wanted to do something different,

so we used it as an excuse to go to a nightclub

called Quadrant Park dressed up as rappers.

Is this the real john Barnes we're seeing? This is the real