Liverpool and a long summer of grief

New York Times

6 days ago

In Liverpool, there is a point many wish to make. No, the local population is not hooked on grief, as loud and persistent critics have claimed over the years whenever the city has made headlines because of tragedy and other terrible reasons. There is no search for pity either, though a bit of empathy or basic understanding would be nice. What is clear is that nobody asked for this, and nobody is getting off on it. They wish these things hadn't happened. But they keep happening.
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This summer has been one of the most upsetting and unsettling in the recent history of the city, where the mood has long been at least influenced or entirely defined by the fortune of its football clubs — one of which was crowned Premier League winners in May for only the second time in 35 years.
It promised to be a glorious few months for anyone who wants Liverpool FC to do well.
Except, less than 24 hours after the league trophy was lifted inside a febrile Anfield, a Ford Galaxy ploughed into supporters of the champions at the end of a victory parade, injuring more than 100 people aged between nine and 78. Paul Doyle, 53, is accused of driving the car and will enter a plea at Liverpool Crown Court next Thursday ahead of trial later this year that is expected to last three to four weeks.
Though nobody died on Water Street, where the incident took place, images of the scene are embedded into the consciousness of anyone who was there, as well as those distressed in other locations waiting for contact from loved ones, and more broadly, hoping that everyone else was simply alive. That proved to be the case, but some are still asking themselves whether they will be able to celebrate with abandon the next time their team shows off a trophy.
The crash was still being processed when, barely five weeks later, there was another heart-sinking development.
Diogo Jota had twirled his scarf on the bus as it crept past the iconic Royal Liver Building, which moments later bordered a crime scene. Yet suddenly, aged 28, he was gone following a car accident that also claimed the life of his brother Andre Silva in northern Spain.
Since becoming a Premier League winner for the first time, Jota had won the Nations League with Portugal and had got married. Next summer, there was a realistic chance of him becoming a World Cup winner. Instead, he leaves behind his childhood sweetheart, Rute, as well as their three children and a lingering sense across Liverpool of what else is just around the corner.
Before all of this, there was Paris in 2022, where, at the Champions League final, supporters (including children) were brutalised by police and local gangs following the collapse of the security operation because of mistakes made by organisers and the authorities. Liverpool would lose the final narrowly to Real Madrid but, for many of the dazed and worried, the score did not seem to matter.
Paul Dunderdale does not use the word lightly, but he questions whether Liverpool are 'cursed'. He was fished out of one of the central pens in the Leppings Lane stand at Hillsborough in 1989, where 97 Liverpool fans were 'unlawfully killed' following a crush caused by a combination of institutional failures. One of the fatalities in Sheffield was his friend, Graham Roberts, who was due to get married to Dunderdale's sister-in-law.
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Paul was there at the parade in May with his family. After the bus passed by, he retreated to his son's dockside apartment nearby because of the rain, while his daughter walked towards Kensington, where she lives as a student. The route took her via Water Street.
'It was a very close call,' Paul stresses. 'It put a complete downer on the day. It wasn't about the parade anymore. It wasn't about Liverpool celebrating. That wasn't the news.'
Paul acknowledges that the wider response to the crash, as well as Jota's death, has involved shock and support. He knows from experience, however, that attitudes can change when survivors or anyone else suffering articulates their experiences after the world has moved on and serious issues are treated with less care, falling into joke territory.
He wonders how long it will be before someone casually mentions karma or Heysel, where 39 Juventus fans lost their lives in 1985 after a wall collapsed. One of the main factors that led to those deaths was a charge by Liverpool supporters.
For Paul, the parade triggered some awful memories he tries to contain. Hillsborough is always there, nestling somewhere at the back of his thoughts. 'We get accused of being victims all the time but if the people who claim that were put in the same situation, they'd react in a similar way,' he says. 'I wouldn't have wished Hillsborough or any of the more recent events on anyone.'
'What happened at the parade was especially hard to deal with,' stresses Paul, 'because the mood until the incident was joyous. Suddenly, your emotions are swinging in exactly the opposite direction.'
And, aside from the weather, it had up until that point been the perfect weekend. For a large group of match-going Liverpool supporters, preparations for the club's 2024-25 title celebrations began at the start of the year when they booked The Long Shot bar at the Albert Dock for the evening of 25 May, after the last game of the season against Crystal Palace.
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There was a bit of conversation about jinxing any potential achievement, but everyone was unsure how busy Liverpool city centre was going to be. The venue would allow hundreds of familiar faces — known to one another because of their shared journeys across the country and into Europe — to get together in one room for a moment many had not experienced before.
It had been 35 years since Liverpool marked a title properly because the coronavirus pandemic stopped that opportunity in 2020, when they were last champions. Lizzi Doyle, a season-ticket holder in Anfield's main stand, got ready for this occasion by having a curly blow-dry in the morning before attending the Palace match, which ended in a 1-1 draw.
Despite strong winds, her hair remained in one place. Linda Pizzuti, the wife of Liverpool's principal owner John W. Henry, was serving pints of lager from a kiosk inside Anfield, and Lizzi toasted her team's success, staying in the ground for at least an hour after the final whistle because she 'did not want the day to end'.
The party pushed on, firstly to the Glenbuck pub near the stadium and then towards town. Lizzi had carefully created a long playlist of songs over which Liverpool's away support had bonded on their bus and train travels. No one was allowed to press shuffle and when Borderline by Madonna came on, everyone piled onto the dance floor.
A lot of people ended up in The Croc, a famous karaoke bar not far away. Lizzi waited her turn to perform Moving on Up by M People before dropping the mic and making a swift exit. It was getting late and Liverpool was so rammed that taxis were scarce and, a few hours later, the mother of one of her friends came to the rescue in a car.
Lizzi realised she hadn't eaten anything all day and ended up devouring a cheese and onion sandwich and a packet of Pringles from a garage. Everything tasted just great.
The parade was the next day and it passed not far from her parents' home in the south end of Liverpool, so Lizzi decided to attend the start of the procession rather than the end, in the city centre where more than a million people were estimated to have gathered.
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She was driving with a friend as the procession approached the Pier Head when they debated whether to turn left from Queens Drive and head towards the crowds. Her friend was following what was happening on a phone via live feed and the pair started asking themselves why they hadn't gone in the first place.
It was raining heavily, but the city looked 'amazing'. At that very moment, Liverpool felt like the centre of the UK: the acclaimed drama series This City is Ours — set in Liverpool — had just finished on BBC1 and the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend, held in the city, had been a roaring success. Now this. They became emotional. 'We were so proud,' Lizzi remembers.
Within a few minutes, however, the mood changed. Lizzi received a WhatsApp message about an incident on Water Street. She checked her social media channels and kept refreshing feeds. There were rumours of a car crashing into people. Her stomach turned. Then she saw the videos. She was panicking. Lots of people she knew were in that area. Were they safe? She was concerned for everyone.
In 2017, friends had been at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester when a bomber killed 22 people, injuring more than a thousand others. The sense of fear and hopelessness felt a lot like that night. As she doom-scrolled on her phone, the videos and comments were getting worse and worse but she could not tear herself away from it.
Thankfully, all of her close friends on both occasions were OK, but it was still unclear whether anyone had died. Maybe she knew someone.
Considering how wonderful the weekend had been, the scenes from just a few miles away were unimaginable. 'There's only one thing I see when I think of the parade now,' she admits.
Lizzi knows Gareth Roberts, who is the communications officer for the Spirit of Shankly supporters' union. He was using social media to search for his son.
Like Lizzi, he had marked Liverpool's title the night before with match-going mates he'd known all of his life, heading to The Dispensary pub on Renshaw Street where they ordered a tray of Shanky's Whip.
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The following day, he observed the parade from the offices of LFCTV on Chapel Street, where he was invited as a guest to comment on the scenes. From a balcony that overlooks the north end of the city centre, he had a privileged position. There was electricity in a huge crowd, which had remained patient in the rain for hours, just to see their heroes come and go inside a few seconds. His soon-to-be 17-year-old son was somewhere down there with his mates.
As soon as the parade was over, Gareth made a dart. Water Street leads onto Dale Street, where Gareth headed, turning left near the Ship & Mitre pub. Suddenly, police officers were running in the opposite direction, yelling at everyone to get onto the footpath. Police cars, marked and unmarked, as well as fire engines, came screaming past.
Inside the pub, customers were arriving flustered and upset. Gareth started punching at his phone, desperately trying to contact his son, but the line was jammed because so many in the area were attempting the same thing. He tried turning his phone on and off to get a signal. He also jumped on the pub's wifi, but no one was responding.
'I felt sick to the pit of my stomach,' he says. 'From the moment I knew something was wrong, I wasn't interested in anything else.'
This went on for more than 40 agonising minutes. It turned out that his son was right there on the scene when the incident happened. One of his mates saw the car coming towards them and he quickly started pulling people out of the way. Though the vehicle narrowly missed his son, some of those in front of him were sucked underneath the wheels and ended up in the hospital.
The safest thing to do was to get out of town, so his son walked to the nearest train station at Moorfields. Though he was safe as he waited on a platform deep beneath the ground, he was also unreachable, as transport links were briefly suspended while the authorities tried to get a grip on what had happened.
When Gareth finally made contact, the relief was enormous. 'But the mood in the city tanked. It was the only thing people were talking about.'
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Even though his son escaped unhurt, it was down to 'pure luck' and as he nursed his pint later that night, in the uncertain hours while others were being treated for their injuries, Gareth became upset, knowing how close his son had been to the car. 'I'm gutted for the young people caught up in this especially. It should be remembered as one of the greatest days of their lives, but it's tainted now.'
It is impossible not to associate Liverpool's achievement last season without Jota.
Though he scored just six goals in the league campaign, two were pivotal: the first an equaliser at high-flying Nottingham Forest when, as a substitute, he scored with his first touch of the ball; then another in the Merseyside derby at Anfield. That game was going nowhere before he struck the only goal in front of the Kop.
'Typical of him,' says Gareth, a view shared by anyone who saw that fixture.
Jota was the sort of player who delivered when it really mattered and the fans loved him for it. Locally, his bond with supporters became tighter because of his celebration after scoring the winning penalty in a shootout victory over Leicester City in the League Cup at Anfield in 2021, 15 months into his Liverpool career. Jota did not hold back that night in front of the away end, from which travelling fans had relentlessly goaded Liverpool as a place through old tropes relating to unemployment.
For locals especially, it felt like Jota was standing up for them. The image married with the industry and the spirit he showed on the pitch.
Since Jota's death, both Gareth and Lizzi have visited the shrine outside Anfield, where flowers have stretched the length of the main stand and beyond. What struck Roberts the most were the children standing there quietly in their 'Jota 20' shirts, unsure of how to express themselves. 'I had posters of John Barnes and Ian Rush on the wall as a kid,' he says. 'I can't imagine how I'd react if I found out one of them had passed away in these circumstances. I'd have been absolutely distraught.'
Lizzi was there when the Everton manager David Moyes laid flowers. The sheer scale of the shrine and the sight of famous rivals in mourning was surreal and overwhelming.
When she found out about Jota's passing, Lizzi stared at the television with her parents in silence for what felt like hours. She had tickets for a Stevie Wonder gig that night at Lytham Festival and instinctively didn't want to go but went anyway, feeling numb for most of the performance, until another match-going Liverpool supporter saw her in the crowd and gave her a hug.
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She acknowledges that there is a distance between players and fans, but their interests are aligned and, on that basis, it is perfectly normal to feel sadness and grief for someone you have never met. Given that the summer has been one of the busiest in Liverpool's history in terms of transfers, it is understandable if it currently feels as though Jota has simply moved away, but challenges lie ahead.
'There are no right answers about how to react,' insists Gareth, who realises that acts of respect can be received differently. While it might feel right to sing Jota's name at the Community Shield on Sunday, or when Liverpool return to Premier League action against Bournemouth next Friday, might his song upset the players, reminding them they were not sharing a pitch with someone they valued and lost so suddenly?
'There's still a lot for everyone to work out. Nobody saw any of this coming.'
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