Liverpool

Liverpool were founded in 1892 after a dispute left Everton homeless — so the new club simply moved into the empty Anfield instead. The modern Liverpool was built by Bill Shankly, who arrived in 1959 and turned a Second Division side into champions, then by Bob Paisley, whose teams won six league titles and three European Cups between 1974 and 1983 — the greatest dynasty English football has ever seen. The anthem 'You'll Never Walk Alone,' sung before every home game, is the most famous ritual in world football.

The club's identity is written in European nights: the 1977 and 1978 European Cup wins, and above all Istanbul 2005, when Liverpool came from 3–0 down at half-time against AC Milan to win the Champions League on penalties — the greatest final comeback ever. Tragedy is part of the story too: the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 claimed 97 lives and reshaped English football forever. Under Jürgen Klopp, the 'heavy metal' pressing side won the Champions League in 2019 and ended a 30-year wait for the league title in 2020.

Today Liverpool are England's most decorated club, their record-equalling 20th league title won in 2025. Anfield, expanded past 61,000, remains the most atmospheric big ground in the country on European nights. The 2020s brought upheaval — the tragic death of striker Diogo Jota in a 2025 car crash cast a shadow over the club, Arne Slot departed after one difficult season, and Andoni Iraola arrived to lead a rebuild around a new generation of stars. The expectations, as ever, are sky-high: at Liverpool, competing is never enough.

Bill Shankly arrived at Anfield in December 1959 to find a club rotting in the Second Division with a crumbling stadium. What he built over the next fifteen years is the foundation everything since has stood on: a training ground at Melwood, a boot room where coaches drank tea and plotted dynasties, and an ethos he summed up as turning Liverpool into “a bastion of invincibility.” Shankly won three league titles and the UEFA Cup, but his true monument was the machine he left behind. Bob Paisley, his quiet successor, ran the most dominant decade in English football history between 1974 and 1983 — six league championships and three European Cups, a record of sustained excellence nobody in England has touched since. Joe Fagan added the 1984 treble of league, European Cup and League Cup, and Kenny Dalglish the player-manager won the 1986 double, all of it flowing from Shankly’s boot-room lineage.

Tragedy is woven into the club’s identity as deeply as the triumphs. At Heysel in 1985, 39 people — mostly Juventus supporters — died before the European Cup final, and English clubs were banished from Europe for five years. At Hillsborough in April 1989, 97 Liverpool supporters went to an FA Cup semi-final and never came home. What followed was a thirty-year fight by the families for the truth, ending in the 2016 inquests’ verdict of unlawful killing and the full exoneration of the supporters. Hillsborough reshaped English football itself — all-seater stadiums, the Taylor Report, the modern game’s safety culture all trace back to that day. The flame at the Anfield memorial burns for the 97, and every season the club and the city renew the promise: never forgotten. The 2020s added another wound the club is still carrying — the death of striker Diogo Jota in a 2025 car crash, a loss that cast a long shadow over the title celebrations.

Jürgen Klopp’s arrival in 2015 rebooted the whole institution. The “heavy metal” pressing side he built won the Champions League in Madrid in 2019 — the club’s sixth — and then, in 2020, ended the thirty-year wait for the league title with a campaign that was over by February. The 2025 title, the club’s 20th, drew Liverpool level with Manchester United as England’s most successful league club. Arne Slot delivered that championship in his debut season, but his second campaign unravelled badly enough that he departed in 2026 — and the rebuild that followed has defined the story of this season. Into the hot seat stepped Andoni Iraola, the man who had turned Bournemouth into one of the most admired sides in the country with a high-intensity pressing game built on defensive aggression.

That philosophy is now the club’s project. Alexander Isak, the £125 million record signing from Newcastle, has explained it plainly: Iraola wants him to lead the press, to defend in positions where winning the ball back becomes an attacking weapon. After a debut season wrecked by a December leg break — four goals in 22 appearances — Isak has been reborn: four in five to open the new campaign, already past his entire league total from last year. The understanding with Cody Gakpo has been the story of the autumn; the Dutchman has assisted three of Isak’s four league goals, the most productive partnership in the Premier League so far. The 2-0 win at Ipswich announced the revival — Isak scoring twice in nine minutes — and the 1-0 victory at Bournemouth, settled by Isak in the 57th minute on Iraola’s return to his old club, made it two wins from five and kept Liverpool unbeaten.

Yet unbeaten does not mean comfortable. Three of the five league games have finished 2-2 — at Newcastle, at home to Nottingham Forest — and the 0-0 stalemate with Fulham showed a side still learning how to turn control into kills. Alisson produced a crucial first-half stop to deny Bournemouth’s Evanilson, and captain Virgil van Dijk admitted after the Bournemouth win that Liverpool still need to improve. The pieces, though, are unmistakable: Florian Wirtz, the marquee summer playmaker, asked to unlock everything; Bradley Barcola, who made his Liverpool debut off the bench at Ipswich after his huge summer move from Paris Saint-Germain; Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister running the midfield; Dominik Szoboszlai’s set-piece thunder. Anfield, expanded past 61,000, remains the most atmospheric big ground in the country when the lights come on — and this autumn will tell us whether Iraola’s press can turn the draws into the kind of run that keeps a title defence alive.