Saturday 17 May will see the final ever game at Everton’s Goodison Park, and with it the end of 133 years of history. Unless the rumour of a last-minute reprieve involving the women’s team turns out to be true (highly unlikely), the bulldozers will soon get to work and the ground will be reduced to rubble. The club will move into a new ‘super arena’ at Bramley-Moore Dock, Vauxhall, for the 2025/26 season.
Sad? Well, yes. The club, on its website, has acknowledged the mixed feelings of the faithful but promised the move will be an ‘exciting new chapter in the club’s history’, with the additional 13,000 seats in the new ‘365-day’ ground offering space for additional ‘fandom’, including many more of those all-important, merchandise-hungry ‘tourists’. For the particularly sentimental, though, a special ‘Goodbye to Goodison commemorative pack’ is available (£65 + P&P).
This is becoming a familiar story, with Goodison just the latest historic ground consigned to history in the rapacious Premier League era. Highbury, Maine Road, Ayresome Park, Upton Park, Ninian Park, Roker Park, Burnden Park, the Dell, Filbert Street, the Baseball Ground, Highfield Road – all have been demolished and replaced with supposedly unique but, in reality, homogeneous chrome-and-steel mega-stadiums with about as much charm as an out-of-town shopping centre. And according to plans from Jim Radcliffe, the 115-year-old Old Trafford will be replaced by the ‘Wembley of the North’ in the next few years.
Not all clubs relocate, but even the new grounds that stand on old sites lack the magic of the originals. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is hardly a football ground at all (football is the ninth item on the drop-down menu of coming attractions, behind boxing, F1 karting, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar). It may still be on the sacred soil, but it feels like replacing Nuovo Cinema Paradiso with an Odeon multiplex. As for the new Wembley, who really prefers the arch to the towers? Not a certain Diego Maradona, who, when he heard of the demolition and rebuild, lamented: ‘Why couldn’t they just remodel it?’ Why indeed?
For sure, there are undoubted advantages with the new stadiums, which are bigger, safer and more comfortable. And more flexible; it is hard to imagine Taylor Swift playing Goodison and getting changed in the home dressing room, but at the Bramley-Moore super-stadium, perhaps she might. Clubs are businesses, after all, and if the market demands more access and local residents won’t permit expansion (as happened to Arsenal), then it would be Rachel Reeves-ish to stand in the way of a revenue-boosting move. And with more than 14 Premier League clubs having foreign owners, such thinking is inevitable.
But what is the cost? There is a cavalier, almost Beeching-esque haste about the way these venerable stadiums are being pulverised, and a worrying disregard of fans’ feelings in the matter. In Everton’s case, the ground is in the centre of a residential neighbourhood, a symbol of football’s place in the community (a church protrudes at one corner and Sunday kick-off times still take account of congregants). It’s a quirky, tight little arena where, as Ally McCoist said, when commenting on the recent epic 2-2 draw with Liverpool, ‘You can cheer the tackles.’
The new grounds that stand on old sites lack the magic of the originals
History seeps from the rafters at Goodison: an FA Cup final was held here, and a World Cup semi-final. It was the site of England’s first ever home defeat to a non-British team (0-2 to Ireland in 1949). The Gwladys Street and Bullens Road ends were bomb-damaged in the second world war. Partly designed by the great architect Archibald Leitch, Goodison is a thing of beauty and one of the last top-flight grounds where another era, another England, can be glimpsed and felt.
Which perhaps points to the most disturbing aspect of the slow death of the traditional football ground – a rejection of that past, of that other England. There has been a steady erasure of all traces of the pre-Premiership era in recent years, with barely recognisable strips, rebranded and revamped tournaments, and constant aggressive marketing. Even statistics are being distorted, with ‘all-time Premier League top scorer’ or appearances replacing the far more meaningful top-tier figures – as if football wasn’t being played before 1992.
Then there are the new match-day norms such as taking the knee, rainbow armbands and corner flags, diverse commentary teams, ‘player’ not ‘man’ of the match awards, and breaks in play to facilitate Ramadan. These things are far more suited to the bland, corporate and homogeneous all-purpose enormo-domes of a dockside development zone or trading estate than the cosy little community grounds amid rows of terraced houses, corner shops and pubs.
It almost feels as if the clubs in the greedy, glossy Premiership era are somewhat embarrassed by their pasts and values, of which their rickety old stadiums are an all-too-vivid reminder. Thus, those grand old grounds must go, and all evidence of that time is being forgotten.
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