Fifty years ago, legendary Liverpool manager began revolution to drag club to forefront of modern game.
St George's Hall, Liverpool, 1971. There on the steps before a crowd of thousands stands William Shankly, OBE, arms akimbo in silent exaltation.
The square is packed, some standing on first floor window sills to gain a better view. And this after Liverpool had lost to Arsenal in the FA Cup final. The power of prayer had given over to a new religion, football, and in Liverpool Shankly was the prophet in residence.
"It's questionable if chairman Mao of China could have arranged such a show of strength as you have shown yesterday and today," Shankly said in typically fragrant oratory.
What he might have added but didn’t was this: "Defeat? What is that? A detail brothers and sisters, a footnote in the struggle for supremacy. We. You and me. Liverpool. Yes, Liverpool. Together we can conquer the world."
This thought was already in the minds of the people, slipped there subliminally by the guru of Glenbuck.
This was the essence of Shankly, a bender of minds and wills who, by force of personality, dragged a second-tier ruin from England's decaying industrial north to the forefront of the modern game. Anfield was a slum dwelling when Shankly arrived 50 years ago on Tuesday.
With smog rolling in off the Irish Sea, Shankly turned to Nessie, his wife, and confessed after becoming manager to "a terrible mistake". He would have done a forward roll over broken glass wearing a loin cloth in exchange for the problems Rafael Benítez has now.
Benítez hailed Liverpool's win at Goodison Park on Sunday a turning point. Everton are just about hanging on as a useful reference by which to measure progress. When Shankly pitched up at Anfield, Everton would send food parcels across Stanley Park, a charitable gesture to the poor on their doorstep.
Whatever the burden Benítez carries today, he has Shankly to thank for it. It was he who created the institution Benítez seeks to resurrect.
Bob Paisley embroidered his work with the greater volume of trophies, but he was already in the boot room when Shankly arrived. And he was not the man to whom chairman TV Williams turned on Dec 1, 1959 to build a monument to a great city.
John Toshack, one of many inductees into the Shankly cult, believes the footballing values he espoused are just as valid today. While that is so, it is not his adherence to fundamentals that made Shankly great. Rather it was the fervour he brought to the piece.
Shankly believed absolutely. It was the power to shape the will of others to his own that elevated him to the station of sage.
Benítez is not so different. He asks followers to invest in him not on the basis of evidence as much as trust. Of course the Champions League victory in Istanbul was a significant bonding agent binding Benítez to his flock. Nevertheless relationships with him are largely a matter of faith.
Would Shankly recognise the man we read about today? He has in many ways reduced to a compendium of quotes. "Football is not a matter of life and death. It's more serious than that." Och eye, son. This is how fables are created, the endless reworking of narratives over time.
Shankly emerged from another country. And I'm not talking about Scotland. He was born to a nation in the early stages of industrial decline. His world view and values were chiselled by the grinding hardship of life in the Ayrshire coal belt.
The working classes patented football as a route out. Shankly packed his kit and headed south and like so many others of his time, Sir Matt Busby in Scotland, and Brian Clough in England, he carried with him a deep understanding of his constituency.
Association football was barely 50 years old when he first laced a boot but had already supplanted religion as the opium of the masses. Shankly had an intuitive grasp of the relationship between club and community.
He was fluent in the Scottish footballing argot of the time, a rich tongue on the end of which there was always a quip. In this respect Shankly is the antitheses of Rafa, at least as far as we know. It may be that in his mother tongue Rafa is a riot of one-liners. Of this we can be certain; Shankly would not have had a goatee in a month of Sundays.
Ian St John and Ron Yeats were early recruits, the twin pillars fore and aft on which his first great team was built. In 1964, after 17 years, Liverpool won a sixth championship. There would be three during his reign. Looking towards Europe he brought in the likes of Emlyn Hughes, Ray Clemence, Steve Heighway and Kevin Keegan, lifting the Uefa Cup in 1973.
It would be left to Paisley to see that phase of empire through. Eight weeks after winning the FA Cup in 1974 Shankly was gone. His sudden resignation on July 12 was Liverpool's JFK moment. His retirement, a word he hated, was a messy affair.
Shankly regretted stepping down and couldn't keep away, becoming a progressively unwelcome presence at Melwood. At the club he built Shankly finally walked alone. Shame, but his work was done, never to be forgotten.
in case like me, u are too "young" to know him (hehe), here's his profile:-
1959: Dec 1 - Appointed Liverpool manager after three years at Huddersfield and takes over with the club in the bottom half of the old second division.
1961: Signs key players Ian St John, from Motherwell, and Ron Yeats, from Dundee United.
1962: May - Having overhauled the training facilities and playing squad, Shankly guides Liverpool back into the top flight by winning Division Two by eight points.
1964: May - Wins his first - and the club's sixth - Division One title to succeed near neighbours Everton as champions.
1965: May - Liverpool reach the semi-finals of the European Cup before exiting to eventual winners Inter Milan. Liverpool win their first FA Cup with extra-time victory over Leeds.
1966: May - Liverpool win Division One championship again. Defeated 2-1 in extra time by Borussia Dortmund in European Cup Winners' Cup final at Hampden Park.
1967: June - Signs goalkeeper Ray Clemence from Scunthorpe for £18,000.
1969: May - Liverpool finish runners-up to Leeds in Division One.
1970: Signs Steve Heighway, who was playing as an amateur for Skelmersdale United.
November - Signs John Toshack from Cardiff for £110,000.
1971: May - Liverpool lose 2-1 to Arsenal in FA Cup final.
Signs Kevin Keegan from Scunthorpe for £35,000 and plays him up front with Toshack. The pair go on to become one of the greatest strike partnerships in the game.
1973: May - Shankly wins Division One for a third and final time as manager. Guides Liverpool to victory over Borussia Monchengladbach in a two-legged Uefa Cup final to secure the club's first European trophy.
1974: May - Liverpool finish Division One runners-up to Leeds.
Shankly collects a second FA Cup with 3-0 victory over Newcastle in the final.
July 12 - Retires as Liverpool manager at the age of 60 to spend more time with wife Ness and his family.
November - Shankly is awarded the OBE.
1981: Sept 26 - Admitted to Broadgreen Hospital after a heart attack.
Sept 29 - Dies in the early hours of the morning aged 68. (RIP)
Press release from Liverpool City Council’s Newscentre
For immediate release
Friday 11 December 2009
Honorary Citizen Shankly
* Anfield Stars to Come Out as City Honours Bill Shankly
* Media opportunity Thursday 17 December at 8pm
LIVERPOOL’S Lord Mayor is to make an on-stage tribute to Bill Shankly at the Echo Arena.
Councillor Mike Storey will commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Bill Shankly’s arrival as manager of Liverpool FC by awarding him the title of Honorary Citizen in recognition of his outstanding contribution not just to football but to the whole City.
Councillor Storey said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to recognise one of our finest special citizen’s and honour everything that he brought to the our city. Bill Shankly represented the city with distinction and never missed an opportunity to talk up the city. He really was a great ambassador for Liverpool and I thought it would be great to be able to give him some form of official recognition and fully acknowledge him as a Liverpool great”.
The Lord Mayor sought the agreement of Party Leaders Cllr Warren Bradley and Cllr Joe Anderson and will be holding a small get together for ex-colleagues, family and friends of Bill Shankly at the Town Hall on Thursday 17th December before making the award during the Shankly Show at the Liverpool Echo Arena, that evening.
Andrew Sherlock writer and director of The Shankly Show approached Councillor Storey with the idea. He said: “It has always rankled with Liverpool fans that we should have had at least two footballing knights, Sir Bill Shankly and Sir Bob Paisley, so on this special anniversary I asked the Lord Mayor if we could honour our own with a special award for Shankly – not just for what he did for LFC but for all football fans and for the life, passion and energy he brought to the City he made his home”.
Receiving the award on behalf of LFC and the Shankly family will be Brian Hall who will also be inviting friends and colleagues from the Former Players Association who, like himself, played under Shankly.
Brian said: “Bill Shankly had the greatest single impact on the development of Liverpool Football Club and on my life more than anyone bar none. It is a phrase that is used often, but of him it is absolutely true, he is a legend. It will be great to get the boys together to honour his memory”.
I guess Old Bill will get out of his grave and kick Ah Ben back to Spain if he can see the pompey match.