18-02-2025
Everton's new £760m stadium: A brilliant and breathless first night
Two hours before kick off on Monday evening and the strains of Elton John's 'I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues' can be heard from The Bramley Moore pub, which sits immediately opposite Everton's new ground.
It is less than a week since the same song was belted out by supporters following the club's dramatic 2-2 draw with city rivals Liverpool in the last Merseyside derby, and this time it acts as a bridge between old and new.
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Goodison Park, Everton's home of 133 years, is soon to be replaced by the state-of-the-art facility — known solely as The Everton Stadium for now while the club seeks a naming rights partner — on the city's waterfront.
The Bramley-Moore pub has had a fresh lick of paint, Everton blue replacing green in anticipation of the ground's grand opening in August. Before that, there are three test events to complete for security purposes.
All of a sudden, it is starting to feel very real for Everton and their supporters.
😮💨
— Everton (@Everton) February 17, 2025
This was a momentous, historic night for the club, witnessed by a crowd of 10,000 people including representatives from new owners The Friedkin Group (TFG), club legend Peter Reid, and Everton-supporting boxer Tony Bellew, the latter sat in the row immediately behind the assembled media.
Bellew was vocal throughout the game, a 2-1 defeat for the club's under-18 side against Wigan Athletic, and was keen to see someone from manager Keith Southern's side score the first goal at the new stadium.
That honour instead went to Wigan's Harrison Rimmer, who held up six fingers after scoring, an apparent reference to rivals Liverpool's European Cup wins, although 16-year-old Ray Roberts converted a late penalty to become the first Everton scorer at the new stadium.
Some in Southern's squad had turned down international call-ups, such was the prestige of the occasion, but the football was not the main focus of the night.
Three-and-a-half years ago, the site that now houses this stunning development was little more than a disused dock in a part of Liverpool in urgent need of fresh impetus.
It has taken 480,000 cubic metres of sand, dredged from the nearby Irish Sea, and £760million (£960m) worth of investment, but Everton are nearly there. What started as something of a pipe dream three decades ago, when they first looked at moving, will soon become reality.
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The new stadium is magnificent — an architectural and financial feat. It is somehow futuristic and steeped in the industrial, maritime history of the area, as American architect Dan Meis originally envisaged.
Meis told The Athletic that he wanted to create the feeling of the new stadium having 'emerged out of the dock' and had taken some inspiration from Baltimore's Camden Yards, the home of Major League Baseball's Orioles. He and Everton have honoured the history of the site, preserving the Grade II-listed dock walls and restoring the Hydraulic Tower, also Grade II-listed, at a cost of around £55m.
The long South Stand concourse, which stretches the full width of that part of the ground, looks directly onto Liverpool's waterfront and city centre, roughly a mile south. There can be few better views of its kind in Europe.
For the purposes of Monday's event, only the 14,000-capacity South Stand, Everton's version of Borussia Dortmund's Yellow Wall, was open. Media will be housed at the top of the West Stand in future but were afforded the opportunity to experience the scale of the new structure and its steep gradient.
Supporters stopped to take pictures and videos after walking up the steps from the concourse to their seats, marvelling at the views, while many, including The Athletic, were out of breath after walking right to the very back of the stand.
Photos do not come close to doing it all justice. Every seat has a clear, unobstructed view of the pitch and even on the back row, it feels like you are hanging over the players below. That is by design — Meis was tasked with ensuring the vocal and intense atmosphere of Goodison could be brought across to the new waterfront facility and felt the steep gradient would be essential in doing that.
This was The Athletic's first visit to the stadium — other scheduled visits did not quite come off — and at times it felt like a fever dream. After the difficulties the club has had financially and on the pitch over the past five years, it will have been overwhelming and emotional for many.
It has been a struggle to get here. There have been numerous other botched attempts to build a new stadium over the past 30 years, but even on this project alone, there have been substantial hurdles to overcome. The list is extensive: the Covid pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the geo-political instability in that part of Eastern Europe and elsewhere, inflation, and the club's perilous financial state.
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Everton's financial plan had to change multiple times. First from a senior debt package to a combination of equity from former owner Farhad Moshiri and a naming rights partnership with Alisher Usmanov's USM Holdings and then, finally, when Usmanov was sanctioned following the war in Ukraine, a series of short-term, often high-interest loans to get it over the line.
So many have helped make this dream a reality, including Moshiri and new owners TFG, and it has been a scramble to make the sums add up.
As with any new build, it will take a while for this to properly feel like home. A stadium is nothing without the shared history and experiences of those who frequent it regularly. But this was a good start. There were boos for Rimmer after his celebration and again for the officials at certain points in the match. There was the familiar Goodison shout of 'Come on Blues, these are s****'. Some things will never change.
There is still much to do. Two test events, yet to be announced, remain, while there is the potential of a pre-season friendly. Everton are still completing the internal fit-out in parts of the stadium, including the corporate lounges.
The pitch that was laid for Monday's game is only temporary and will be replaced at the end of the season. The broadcast setup for the live YouTube stream of Monday's game, viewed by 330,000 people at the time of writing, is still being refined.
New catering partner Aramark, whose portfolio includes Atletico Madrid, Berlin's Olympiastadion, and Philadelphia Eagles' Lincoln Financial Field, among others, has promised to make it the best stadium for food and drink in the country.
On Monday, concourse kiosks sold blue donuts featuring the Everton crest, salt and pepper chicken and matchday staples such as pies and sausage rolls. Led by culinary director Adam Bateman, who has previously worked as head chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Verbier, Switzerland, the group is still refining its offer and pricing.
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There are infrastructural questions for the local authorities to answer, too. A fanzone unveiled by the City Region Combined Authority at the nearby Sandhills station has been widely mocked for being too basic.
There were some reports from supporters on Monday that the crowd control measures in place at the station did not seem to prevent over-crowding. The local council has brought in parking restrictions in a bid to ease congestion, but the strain placed on local transport services is something that will almost certainly have to be considered and readdressed, particularly with the new Everton Stadium scheduled to host Euro 2028 games.
Officials working on behalf of the local authority insist that the Sandhills fanzone was just the first phase of the development.
This is a part of the city that experienced hard times in the post-industrial era. Some new bars have opened, while there are plans for boutique hotels, but the hope is that Everton's new stadium can be a catalyst for growth and regeneration. And for a new and improved Everton, too.
The overriding sense on Monday was of fresh momentum for a club that has spent too long in the doldrums.
There have been occasions when supporters have feared where Everton would be by the time the new stadium was completed, but with results improving under manager David Moyes, new owners in situ and the stadium almost ready to open, everyone can start to look forward with optimism.
A bold new dawn awaits for Everton and the sense of anticipation is palpable.
