Merseyside derby memories at Goodison Park: Passion, poignancy, ecstasy, agony and a Tic Tac ad

After 119 meetings at Goodison Park, Everton’s grand old ground is set to host a final derby.

Barring an FA Cup pairing, Everton’s home since 1892 will not witness another Merseyside meeting — that honour will go to Bramley-Moore Dock from next season. Premier League status will still need to be secured by the blue half to ensure it is a match played in the top tier.

How Sean Dyche and his side would love to cause a huge upset when Arne Slot visits as Liverpool manager for the first time.

The Athletic asked its staff and former players to pick the most memorable Merseyside derbies they attended or played in at Goodison. Will English football be a poorer place without it?

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Everton 0 Liverpool 0, Division One, May 3, 1989

I don’t remember much about the game, but that doesn’t matter. What mattered that night was that the Merseyside football community stood together in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, in which, ultimately, 97 Liverpool fans were killed.

This match, just two and a half weeks after the tragedy in Sheffield, was Liverpool’s return to competitive action — and how poignant that it should come against Everton at Goodison.

Everton and their supporters were impeccable after Hillsborough. This wasn’t Liverpool Football Club’s tragedy. This was Merseyside’s tragedy. Families and communities were split down the middle. The sense of grief was profound on both sides of Stanley Park.

The atmosphere on the night was spine-tingling. Blues and reds stood shoulder to shoulder in every sense. Everton fans joined their Liverpool counterparts in singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Liverpool fans paraded a banner thanking their neighbours for their support. Before kick-off and again after the final whistle there were chants of “Merseyside, Merseyside, Merseyside”. It was the same when the clubs met in the all-Merseyside FA Cup final at Wembley a couple of weeks later.

Back in the 1980s Liverpool and Everton battled for league championships and contested FA Cup and League Cup finals, but their rivalry was underpinned by respect and the knowledge that what united the two sets of supporters was more important than what divided them. Over the years, that sense of solidarity and community has been eroded and it has become as spiteful as any other city rivalry. It’s a great shame.

Oliver Kay

Everton 3 Liverpool 0, Premier League, September 9, 2006

I’ll never forget the Andy Johnson derby — or if I do I just need to wait for my ankle to click and the memories come surging back.

I was a news reporter on the local paper (Liverpool Echo) in 2006, a few years before I graduated to the sports desk, and so with fewer weekend working obligations I shared a Goodison season ticket with my brother.

We’d carve up the fixtures and I nabbed the derby. The previous season’s 3-1 defeat in the corresponding fixture sapped his enthusiasm to argue.

So there I was in the Lower Bullens and there was AJ, the lightning striker signed that summer from Crystal Palace for a club-record £8.6million fee, doing his thing.

Long before the unseemly spectacle of Rafa Benitez in the home dug-out, the Spaniard had won his last three derbies, and brought his Liverpool team across the park a few months after winning the the FA Cup.

So hopes were not especially high, certainly nobody predicted a biggest win against Liverpool in 42 years.

Johnson had an electric derby debut: one of those rare afternoons in this fixture from a blue perspective when everything seemed to go right.

Tim Cahill enhanced his cult hero status with the first, Johnson coolly slotted the second, then Pepe Reina fumbled the ball to allow the new striker to gleefully head in the third and deploy that memorable piss-taking celebration. How unusual for Everton not to be the brunt of the derby jokes. To be the ones going into work on Monday morning actually relishing the footy chat.

As Johnson’s header went in, I was jigging on my seat — it was limbs before limbs were cool — and didn’t feel the pain when I fell from it with my trapped ankle twisting.

The pain remained in abeyance for beers in the Taxi Club (our post-game haunt on Cherry Lane) and when it kicked in the next day I was still smiling.

Greg O’Keeffe

Everton 2 Liverpool 3, Premier League, April 16, 2001

Five goals, a din that shook the old ground to its foundations, 12 yellow cards, one red, a missed penalty, a flurry of goalmouth ricochets to leave the majority cursing in disbelief, and a free-kick winner skewered from 40 yards out deep into added time…

As a young reporter, freshly dispatched from the north east and told to “acclimatise” on Merseyside in anticipation of a move to the patch for the following season, this was a frenzied introduction to the derby. And one that history suggests completely passed me by.

In my defence, the 6pm kick off on Easter Monday fell in between ‘conventional’ filing times. Had it been a 3pm start then, in those pre ‘digital-first’ days, the match report would have been filed after the post-match press conferences.

An 8pm start would have demanded running copy during the game to hit the first-edition deadline. But 6pm? In hindsight, I probably should have checked, but the phone signal was sporadic at best around Goodison, the landlines in the press box were all taken and, once the football began, it was hardly possible to hear oneself think.

So I watched, took it all in, tapped in my thoughts on the chaos, marvelled at Everton’s rumbustious approach and Liverpool’s sheer refusal to wilt even once they had been reduced to 10 after Igor Biscan’s red, and gasped at Gary McAllister’s chutzpah to steal five yards and swerve that free kick beyond a startled Paul Gerrard to secure a first away win on this ground since 1990.

A Merseyside derby that had it 𝐚𝐥𝐥! #OnThisDay in 2001, Gary McAllister stepped up to take that injury time free-kick at Goodison with the score at 2-2…😍 pic.twitter.com/WrMYYL4RpD

— Liverpool FC (@LFC) April 16, 2022

It was only after Gerard Houllier and Walter Smith had offered up their thoughts in the old media room that the One2One phone signal kicked back in and, at probably close to 9pm, the voicemail buzzed through from a panicked chief sub. “Dom, where’s your copy? We’re reaching meltdown here.” Sent about half an hour earlier.

They ended up taking the Press Association’s match piece, filed at full time by the reporter sitting in the row in front of me, for first edition. My own report, somewhat rushed through once I realised the full extent of my clanger, made second, but they retained the PA man’s byline on the piece. It remains there online to this day. Which, all things considered, is probably fair enough.

A Goodison derby. An occasion capable of inducing meltdown from Merseyside to distant London, and reducing even impartial reporters to quivering wrecks.

Dominic Fifield

Everton 2 Liverpool 0, Premier League, April 24, 2024

I’d rarely seen such little expectation heading into a Merseyside derby.

Sandwiched between more favourable home games against Nottingham Forest and Brentford, a midweek meeting with Jurgen Klopp’s high-flying Liverpool felt like an inconvenience; a distraction.

But perhaps that worked in Everton’s favour. In a pivotal week, Sean Dyche’s side swept all before them, delivering their best derby performance in over a decade and securing safety.

This was the kind of derby game I’d seen many times before at Anfield. The hosts confident, robust and decisive — the visitors timid and cowering, seeming overawed by the occasion. Only this time the roles were reversed.

Everton trampled all over Liverpool, ending a 12-game winless run against their city rivals. Dominic Calvert-Lewin was magnificent, bullying Ibrahima Konate into a withdrawal just after the hour and towering at the back post to bury a header at the Gwladys Street.

It was the perfect night. My first home derby win covering Everton. Defeat for Klopp in his last game at Goodison, with Liverpool’s title hopes evaporating at the home of their closest rivals.

Still, this victory came with a pang of sadness. There is something special about the old, rickety stadium on nights like these that will be almost impossible to replicate.

Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville put it best: “This gantry is the only one left in the league that shakes when the crowd behind us goes crazy, and the fact that we’re not going to be in this crowd witnessing these types of atmosphere — that’s what I felt towards the last part of the game.

“This is one of the last great grounds in the Premier League… and it has been at its absolute best tonight.”

Patrick Boyland

Everton 4 Liverpool 4, FA Cup, Feb 20, 1991 — and Everton 1 Liverpool 3, Dec 28, 2005

When I was a boy, my hero was John Barnes, so to be inside Goodison when he scored that right-footed curler for Liverpool in the fifth-round replay it was like a dream.

A friend who lived down the road from me (in Ormskirk) used to take me to the games. One week I’d watch Liverpool at Anfield because my mum supported them, the next week I’d watch Everton because of my dad.

The 4-4 game is one of my favourite memories in football. I was sitting with the home fans and when Liverpool scored one of the goals, I ran onto the pitch and quickly realised: “Oh s***, I need to get back into my seat!”

The game was incredible. It had everything and the atmosphere was absolutely rocking in Goodison that night.

As a Liverpool player, the standout memory from the Merseyside derby was beating them 3-1 in 2005. We were on this brilliant run of keeping clean sheets so we just turned up and expected to win. When James Beattie scored I was so annoyed at myself because the cross came from my side.

For the rest of the game, I was focused on having a positive impact going forward to make amends. I didn’t want anyone to dig me out.

I came off feeling very satisfied. I turned it around. Derby games are ugly, horrible to play in at times, and tenacious but as a boyhood Red, to go and win there and tick that off was nice.

Stephen Warnock

Everton 0 Liverpool 1, Premier League, December 19, 2016

The 227th Merseyside derby was a stinker. Neither team deserved to win such an error-strewn contest on a bitterly cold Monday night.

But that made the dramatic late twist all the sweeter as Klopp’s Liverpool turned an instantly forgettable stalemate into a glorious triumph.

There appeared to be little danger in the 94th minute when substitute Daniel Sturridge darted across the face of the penalty area and fired a left-footer goalwards.

However, the ball somehow evaded the dive of stand-in goalkeeper Joel Robles and bounced back off the post. Sadio Mane reacted quickest to slam home the rebound and spark wild scenes among the 3,000 visiting fans in the Lower Bullens Road Stand.

As Everton’s players slumped to the turf, it was a scene which perfectly encapsulated what this fixture means. The ecstasy and the agony. There’s no better way to win a derby, no more galling way to lose.

Amid the celebrations, defender Dejan Lovren emerged through a cloud of white smoke, generated by flares thrown from the away end, with his arms outstretched to embrace Liverpool’s match-winner. What an image.

As shellshocked Evertonians headed for the exits in their droves and reporters embarked on a hasty rewrite with print deadlines looming, Mane’s name echoed around Goodison. It was Liverpool’s first victory across Stanley Park for over five years.

“A wonderful feeling,” said Klopp. “We didn’t deserve this,” bemoaned Everton counterpart Ronald Koeman, who had changed the colour of his Christmas tree decorations in the build-up to the game after being criticised by fans for the red theme.

I’ve seen Liverpool win more emphatically and play so much better at Goodison over the years, but in terms of a moment, that Mane goal takes some beating.

James Pearce

Everton 1 Liverpool 0 (after extra time), FA Cup fourth-round replay, February 4, 2009

The goal generated one of those noises that takes on a physical form. Literally, not metaphorically: whenever Everton score against Liverpool, Goodison Park shakes and rattles; whenever they deliver what seems to be a knockout blow, the old bones of the stadium creak and groan, as though the whole place might fall over in sheer delight.

What made Dan Gosling’s moment different, though, is that hardly anyone saw it. He had been thrown on, as a 19-year-old, to try to settle a game that had become the Platonic ideal of an early 2000s Merseyside derby: an FA Cup fourth-round replay, all angst and attrition, a game in which neither team had even the slightest chance of scoring for the first hour, one that was going to extra time from the moment it started, one that brought nobody any pleasure at all until, after 109 minutes that felt like the span of the entire 17th century, Gosling intervened.

The goal — a crisp, left-footed finish from a cross from the lesser-spotted Andy van der Meyde — sent Goodison into meltdown; the earth was still moving when, up in the press box, it emerged that the 40,000 or so people inside the stadium might have been the only ones who had seen it.

ITV, which had been showing the game live, had cut away in several regions to show an advert. It is not clear why. It may have been during one of football’s occasional experiments with trying to monetise the breaks in play.

Those watching at home, including Gosling’s parents, had gone from learning about the breath-freshening benefits of Tic Tacs to seeing the teenager buried at the bottom of a pile of jubilant Everton players. They saw the goal itself only as a replay.

There were, obviously, complaints from those who had missed it. ITV had to issue a dutiful apology. Inside the ground, though, as the stands shook and the crowd roared, it made it feel somehow special, privileged, private, that rare sort of moment in a globalised, saturated sport that you had to be there to see.

Rory Smith

Everton 1 Liverpool 4, Premier League, December 1, 2021

I’ve always wondered whether the Goodison Park boo was a phenomenon exaggerated by Liverpool supporters, which more recently some Evertonians have, in fairness, been willing to play up to.

That was until December 2021, just around the time Liverpool scored their third goal in a derby that would end in a 4-1 victory for the visiting team.

I was positioned in the Gwladys Street stand that night after an old friend passed on his ticket. I approached with some trepidation as half of my mates are Evertonians and each one of them would relish blowing my cover.

Hence, a snood being placed as high as my nose and a black beanie hat protecting my not exactly inconspicuous ginger hair.

Several sets of eyes caught mine as I clicked through the turnstile, through the bowels of the ancient stand, and took my blue seat. And there, right beside me, was the man whose boo was so regular and loud, he could have been a farmyard animal.

In fairness, he had every reason to be angry. Everton were tragic. Liverpool were magic. They scored twice in the first half right in front of me. Somehow, I managed to keep quiet.

Simon Hughes

Everton 1 Liverpool 0, Division One, May 23, 1985

I was throwing up the night before the game and felt dreadful, but a sickness bug was not going to stop me playing.

Howard Kendall asked me how I was feeling so, of course, I said I was fine! I was not going to miss the Merseyside derby at Goodison — my first and only one — and what an occasion it turned out to be.

Everton had won the title and now we had the chance to beat Liverpool. It was just a few days before the Heysel Stadium disaster.

I’d signed from Sunderland and I knew I was a lucky boy. Howard knew his best team and I was not a part of it. It was only because of injuries to others that I was playing.

The atmosphere was electric. Blue and red everywhere, all mixed in. I liked how the Scousers used to take the piss out of each other but in a friendly way. The banter between the crowd was so unique and something I had not experienced as I wasn’t from the city.

Somehow I got through most of the game and it was my cross that set up Paul Wilkinson for the winner. We had a brilliant team but I felt like a gatecrasher because the hard work had been done the previous season. I made 14 appearances and ended up with a medal and can still remember that derby game so well.

Sadly I didn’t last the whole game, not because I felt sick, but because I had a dead leg! Still, beating Liverpool in a title-winning season was special. The coach, Terry Darracott, reminded me of that, saying that I just rocked up and thought it was easy.

Former player Ian Atkins 

Everton 3 Liverpool 3, Premier League, November 23, 2013

Nothing quite says balls to the wall like replacing an injured left-back with a raw 19-year-old attacker straight out of Barcelona’s La Masia academy.

But Roberto Martinez’s decision to throw on Gerard Deulofeu for Leighton Baines — which consigned Gareth Barry to the left side of defence — summed up the chaotic nature of the 221st derby.

Matches against Liverpool have swayed more to famine than feast at Goodison Park over the past couple of decades, but this was a footballing spectacle — a game even Evertonians could enjoy.

Philippe Coutinho’s early goal was swiftly cancelled out by Kevin Mirallas, the recipient of an awful challenge by Luis Suarez in the previous Goodison derby.

Suarez predictably restored Liverpool’s lead with a free kick before having to wear Mirallas’ retribution on the back of his knee — a red card that could’ve been seen from Mars, but only deemed yellow by referee Phil Dowd, who also decided against showing Steven Gerrard a red for an elbow on Barry.

The image of Romelu Lukaku smacking the corner flag out of the ground after equalising in the second half and roaring in the direction of the Gwladys Street would have been more firmly pressed in the minds of Everton supporters had he not scored a classic Street End goal 10 minutes later. Header, top corner, against Liverpool, at that end? Thousands saw the goal they had dreamt of happen in front of their eyes, and lived it vicariously through the Belgium forward.

Sturridge’s late header capped off a truly wonderful match, not tainted by his curiously strange decision to do his signature dance celebration in front of the Family Enclosure instead of the Liverpool fans.

🔵 A Merseyside derby for the ages, #OnThisDay in 2013 🔴 pic.twitter.com/Ckj5S5LG5y

— Premier League (@premierleague) November 23, 2018

The Brendan Rogers and Martinez eras on Merseyside may have promised much before ultimately producing little, but they did deliver a game — not just a derby — for the ages.

Rhodri Cannon

Everton 1 Liverpool 1, Premier League, April 16, 1997

I’d always wanted to go to the derby growing up in west Lancashire despite not supporting either team — with most of my school friends of a red persuasion but my best mate a blue. I’m Tangerine — and the only one at my school.

I was the fortunate recipient on this night. My best mate and his dad had a spare ticket at the last minute and I didn’t need asking twice if I wanted to go, particularly with Liverpool in the title hunt.

Goodison, at its spikiest best, was bang up for ruining their title bid from minute one, and 17-year-old Richard Dunne set the tone when he left one on Robbie Fowler early doors.

Claus Thomsen’s own goal gave Roy Evans’ visitors the lead at half-time but Everton fought for everything.

They were rewarded in the 65th minute when Duncan Ferguson, who thrived in the derby but often in the air and was unfairly typecast, left Mark Wright trailing in his wake and slammed a shot into the bottom corner in front of the Gwladys Street. It sparked bedlam.

Fowler was then denied a goal by a post before his temper got the better of him. Having been wound up all night by David Unsworth, he snapped after a late tackle by the defender and they were both sent off for the afters.

Goodison lapped it up, Fowler was suspended for the run-in, it ruined their title chances and I loved every minute. They don’t make them like Goodison anymore.

Craig Chisnall

Everton 1 Liverpool 0, Premier League, December 11, 2004

Horse s*** didn’t dampen my Uncle Stephen’s spirits when he trod right through a mound of it on Goodison Road. “Good luck, isn’t it?” he hoped as we made our way up to the top balcony. Me with my yellow Liverpool away shirt zipped out of sight underneath my Reebok tracksuit jacket.

It was December 2004 and Rafa Benitez was in his first season in charge of Liverpool and was like me and Xabi Alonso about to experience a derby at Goodison Park for the very first time.

I can’t say any of us particularly enjoyed our experience at the game now simply identifiable in four words: ‘The Lee Carsley derby’. The former Everton midfielder, who just last month was interim manager of England, scored a most iconic goal in a 1-0 win.

Twenty years later and I still haven’t heard the last of it from my Uncle Stephen, who I have never actually called Stephen because his nickname to everyone is ‘Nipper’. So much so when my Aunty Cathy (a Liverpool fan) signs off birthday cards from them both it takes a split second to figure out who Stephen is.

Stephen is the uncle who danced his way back through the horse muck on the way out of Goodison and asked me if I wanted to switch allegiances. “See that scarf,” he pointed at a blue one. “I’ll buy you that and you can be one of us. There will be no looking back!” I declined the invitation to join the Goodison gang.

And I have to say he was wrong. There has been plenty of looking back on the 200th derby. I’ve thanked our Nipper many times over the years for taking me to see the team that five months later would be crowned champions of Europe. And it wasn’t Everton.

And as we approach the final Goodison derby it would be remiss of me not to mention this will be my nan and grandad’s 150th derby since their marriage in June 1956. I remember my nan (an Evertonian) being asked the secret to her and my Liverpudlian grandad’s long-lasting marriage of 68 years and counting. My nan joked how you have to “keep fighting”.

But maybe the real secret to their success, aside from their undying love, is that for the first six years of their marriage Liverpool were in the second division so the two sides never met at Goodison or Anfield again until 1962.

Caoimhe O’Neill

(Design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic. Photos: Getty Images)