Liverpool

Liverpool is an English club based in Liverpool, Merseyside County. It is the most successful football club in England – it’s the only English club that has become the champions in the Champions League five times. Moreover, Meseysidians has won the FA Cup eighteen times (the same record holds Manchester United). The team also holds the English record in terms of won home and European titles.

The home stadium of Liverpool is Anfield which can accommodate more than 45 000 people. The stadium is situated three miles from the center of Liverpool.

The club was founded on March 15, 1892 by John Houlding, the owner of the stadium Anfield.  Houlding decided to establish his own team after the previous renter of the stadium, Everton, left the stadium because of the argument round the rental fee. The new team was going to leave the previous name (Everton) but the football association refused to acknowledge the new team in such terms. As a result, the team was named in honour of the city – Liverpool. In two years already the club entered the English football league.

Two terrible disasters in the European football are connected with the name of the club: on may 29, 1985 at the stadium Heysel 39 people were killed and on April 15, 1989 at the stadium Hillsborough 96 people were killed and 766 people were injured. After the Heysel tragedy the English clubs were banned from participating in the European championships for five years and Liverpool was banned for six years.
Since 1960 the song “You’ll never walk alone” has been the official anthem of the club. The name of this song can be also found on the crest of the club and on the gates to the Anfield stadium.

From 1993 to 2009 the official sponsor of the club was the Dutch brewery Carlsberg but in September it was declared that from the 2010-11 season the four-year agreement between Liverpool and the Standard Chartered Bank is coming into force. According to this agreement the club will get 80 million pounds for placing the logo of the bank on their T-shirts. Thus, the seventeen-year-old cooperation between the English club and the Dutch company (the longest one in the history of the British football) has come to an end.  On September 14 Liverpool and Standard Chartered officially announced signing the agreement.

Club’s statistics

•    The first official match of the club was held in the Lancashire league against Higher Walton. The reds won with the score 8:0. There was no one English player in the squad, mainly Scotsmen.
•    The debut in the FA Cup was in September 1892 when Liverpool beat Nantwich with the score 4:0.
•    The debut in the Football League took place on September 2, 1893 in the match against Middlesbrough (the second division)
•    The first trophy was in the 1893-94 season when Liverpool became the champion of the second division.
•    On September 5, 1896 Liverpool were playing with Blackburn Rovers. Rovers won 1:0 but six goals scored during the match were annulled.  
•    In December 1909 Newcastle were winning at Anfield with the score 2:5 but ‘the reds’ managed to snatch a victory with the score 6:5.  
•    In 1910 Manchester United was beaten with the score 4:3.
•    The record in terms of hat-tricks belongs to Gordon Hodgson who made seventeen hat-tricks for the period from September 1926 till February 1935.
•    The largest failure was in 1935 from Huddersfield (0:8) and from Birmingham City (1:9) on December 11, 1954 in the second football league.
•    Three hat-tricks in a row were done by Jack Balmer in the 1946-47 season (no one else has managed to beat this record).
•    Roger Hunt scored the largest number of goals in the league for one season – in the 1961-62 season he scored 41 goals.
•    The first European match where Liverpool overplayed the Icelandic KP Reykjavik with the score 5:0 took place on August 17, 1964 in the European Champions Cup. 
•    In the 1965-66 season Liverpool won the FA Cup using only fourteen players in the squad.
•    The largest victory (11:0) was won in the match against Strømsgodset on September 17, 1974. Nine out of ten players managed to score a goal.
•    Ian Rush is the holder of the Liverpool record in the number of scored goals during the championships in one season — in the 1983-84 season he scored 47 goals.
•    The largest victory in the championship was in the game against Crystal Palace on September 12, 1989 (9:0).
•    Four players scored five goals in one match:
o    Andy McGuigan (1901-02)
o    John Evans (1954-55)
o    Ian Rush (1983-1984)
o    Robbie Fowler (1993-94)
•    The quickest hat-trick was made by Robbie Fowler in the match against Arsenal in the 1994-95 season. He heeded 4 minutes and 32 seconds to score three goals.
•    The longest goal of Liverpool was scored by Xabi Alonso who got the ball into the goal of Luton from the distance of 65 yards. It was on January 7, 2006 at the FA Cup.  
•    Liverpool is the second team that passed all the qualifying rounds and reached the play-off stage of the Champions League (season 2005-06).  
•    Roger Hunt in the 1961-62 season and Fernando Torres in the 2007-08 season scored in eight matches in a row at Anfield. 
•    On November 6, 2007 Liverpool won the victory over Beşiktaş J.K. in the UEFA Champions League with the score 8:0. This result is considered to be a record in the given competition.

Titles

National
•    English football champions: (18): 1901, 1906, 1922, 1923, 1947, 1964, 1966, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990
•    Second division: (4): 1894, 1896, 1905, 1962
•    Lancashire League: (1):1893
•    FA Cup: (7): 1965, 1974, 1986, 1989, 1992, 2001, 2006
•    League Cup: (7): 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1995, 2001, 2003
•    FA Charity Shield: (15): 1964, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 2001, 2006

International
•    European Cup and UEFA Champions League: (5): 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2005
•    UEFA Cup: (3): 1973, 1976, 2001
•    UEFA Super Cup: (3): 1977, 2001, 2005

Current squad

1.    Albert Riera (midfielder)   
2.    Alberto Aquilani (midfielder)   
3.    Andrea Dossena (defender)        
4.    Andriy Voronin (forward)
5.    Glen Johnson (defender)   
6.    David N'Gog    (defender)   
7.    Damien Plessis (midfielder)   
8.    Daniel Agger    (defender)
9.    Daniel Sánchez Ayala (defender)   
10.    Jay Spearing    (midfielder)   
11.    Jamie Carragher (vice-captain) (defender)   
12.    Diego Cavalieri (goal-keeper)    
13.    Dirk Kuyt (forward)
14.    Yossi Benayoun (midfielder)   
15.    Christopher Bukhtmann (midfielder)   
16.    Lucas (midfielder)   
17.    Martin Kelly (defender)       
18.    Martin Škrtel (defender)   
19.    Nabil El Zhar (forward)       
20.    Péter Gulácsi (goal-keeper)       
21.    Ryan Babel (forward)   
22.    Sotirios Kyrgiakos (defender)
23.    Stephen Darby (defender)   
24.    Steven Gerrard (captain) (midfielder)   
25.    Fábio Aurélio (defender)   
26.    Fernando Torres (forward)
27.    Philipp Degen    (defender)   
28.    Javier Mascherano (midfielder)   
29.    Reina (goal-keeper)   
30.    Emiliano Insúa (defender)

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