It is Bill Shankly, the greatest of all Liverpool FC managers, who is credited with speaking the immortal line: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
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It is ostensibly a joke. But academics—among them the sociologist Dr Anne Eyre—have devoted effort to analysing the parallels between football and organized religion.
In a 1997 paper entitled “Football and Religious Experience: Sociological Reflections” Dr Eyre noted that not only did some clubs grow out of parish and church teams, but that football in the late twentieth century (and now the twenty-first) performs some of the same roles as an organized faith: “religion is part of the overall quest for meaning and transcendence in contemporary society. That quest takes many forms—some more traditional, others more secular.”
The more I read, the more plausible it seemed that football had some of the functions of a religion. Being a fan gives you a sense of shared identity, a membership expressed in colors and kits. There is the profusion of symbology (badges and banners) and holy relics (signed shirts and silverware). There are small superstitions too—the lucky socks that are never washed.
The leaders of this Saturday congregation were the managers, who—like Shankly—sometimes became canonized in retirement or death. Players too had their power: Maradona had the “Hand of God.” Robbie Fowler, among Liverpool fans, was nicknamed “God.” There were the anthems—which, when sung in unison by thousands, brought about a tingling of the spine that edged towards transcendence.
The more I read, the more plausible it seemed that football had some of the functions of a religion.
The word “faith” seemed important—keeping an unconditional faith as your club’s fortunes fluctuated, clinging to an (often misguided or irrational) belief they could be raised from the underworld of the lower leagues and ascend to glory. Around it too, Dr Eyre identified the idea of pilgrimage: of Saturday journeys made by generations of fans to home grounds. And also to rainy away days in February—the nil-nil draws that demanded even greater devotion.
There was the endless journey of the league—but pilgrimage was a better fit for the FA Cup, where fans spoke of being on “the road to Wembley.” Its anthem was the hymn ‘Abide with Me’. Here teams did not know which opponents they would face until the draw was made—giants or minnows, David or Goliath. But a long run in the cup would mean being tested in far corners of the country.
On 15 April 1989 Nottingham Forest fans travelled to Sheffield for the FA Cup semi-final. Those northbound on the M1 would have passed the collieries—then in their last days—while fans going by train trundled under the crooked spire at Chesterfield. Supporters of the opposing team, Liverpool, had more choices—they could follow the M62 on a dog-leg route via Huddersfield (it was busy with traffic that day).
Other options were the wriggly Pennine passes across the spine of Northern England, over the watersheds and the moors. Among them: the Woodhead Pass and its chain of reservoirs; the sharp bends of the Snake Pass under the bulk of Kinder Scout; or the Hope Valley, which led to the great gritstone edges, and the city of steel which lay just beyond. One special train left Liverpool for the occasional matchday station at Wadsley Bridge, over the road from Hillsborough Stadium.
Typically, one team would have continued their FA Cup journey that day, but instead a tragedy ensued. The aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster saw what became known as the “Anfield Pilgrimage”—journeys of meaning, which continued through the spring days of 1989, and which, in a much wider sense, are ongoing today. Dr Eyre had written about this too.
When I called her up on Zoom, I understood that her interest was not purely academic. She was drinking from a Liverpool FC mug. She explained she had grown up in Barnet, north London, and had started out as a Chelsea fan, but switched to Leeds during the glory days of the 1970s, when Johnny Giles and Billy Bremner ran amok.
When Liverpool beat Newcastle 3–0 in the 1974 FA Cup final she switched allegiance one final time. Her headteacher told her not to talk about football in her interview at Liverpool University, but she did, and won her place.
“From the minute I got there, I felt at home,” Dr Eyre told me. “It’s something that’s relevant to pilgrimage. It’s as if I’d been there before. I’ve never been able to bottom that out: I’ve thought about that deep mystical stuff. I haven’t got a firm view about reincarnation.”
She completed her PhD in March 1989. A month later she was in Pen 3 in the West Stand of Hillsborough, with her then boyfriend. As things became more constrained, she prepared to “ride it out.” She worried she was being too “girly” and looked at the clock. People don’t realize they’re in a fatal crush while it’s happening, she explained.
She was saved by being pulled up to the stands above. The next day, Anne and her boyfriend stepped off the train back in Liverpool, and joined vast crowds thronging towards its Catholic cathedral. A nun had stitched together an LFC banner to be placed beside the altar.
‘There was some real desperate need to get home: to be among your people,’ she said. ‘The symbol of the community was the Catholic cathedral. There was a loudness in the silence there. I can remember even now: people going up and putting scarves on the altar. It was inclusive, embracing, spontaneous. Over the next few days I felt absolutely held.’
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Liverpool has a skyline like no other. Many industrial cities have hidden their churches: mills, chimneys and warehouses crowded out the medieval spires centuries ago. More recently, plate glass towers have come to define the silhouette of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and others. Liverpool is unusual in being both dominated and defined by its twin cathedrals—two structures set on a hilltop. Both are mighty, and both are modern.
In the first summer after the lockdowns I spent a week in Liverpool working on a story for National Geographic Traveller—staying in a B & B in a Georgian terrace. From my window I could see the hulking tower of Liverpool Cathedral, the Anglican place of worship.
It is impossible to miss, being the biggest cathedral in Britain (and by some measures the eighth largest in the world). Its tower rises like an immense lighthouse over Mersey shipping. Inside, local sandstone gives the space an earthy feel. In the nave, you sense you might be standing in a canyon between two red cliffs.
It was one of a few religious buildings I had been to—Hagia Sophia and Seville Cathedral were others—that seemed big enough to accommodate a concept of the almighty.
Liverpool Cathedral was designed by a Roman Catholic architect, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and finished in 1978. Around seven hundred meters away stands Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, the Roman Catholic church designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd (who also designed London Central Mosque), which was consecrated the decade before.
Where Gilbert Scott’s design was neo-Gothic, Gibberd’s design seemed almost intergalactic—a cone rising to a space-age tower. Light filtered in through sapphire-hued stained glass that encircled the nave.
When I stepped in one August afternoon, the blue light made me think of an aquarium. To others it looked more like a tent, and was nicknamed “Paddy’s Wigwam,” on account of the Irish Catholics who made up much of the congregation.
The two stood at opposite ends of a thoroughfare named Hope Street, which seemed allegorical (but was actually just an accident, being named after the merchant William Hope). In another city—Belfast or Glasgow, perhaps—these neighboring cathedrals might have seemed adversarial, but in Liverpool they were brotherly, thanks in large part to the Catholic Archbishop Derek Worlock and his Anglican counterpart, Bishop David Sheppard, who struck up a friendship from the 1970s into the 1990s.
There was no competition or resentment when the population settled on Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral as the first place to express its grief in the wake of Hillsborough. The Anglicans held another memorial service with the prime minister in attendance. Two bishops worked as one to minister to the bereaved.
There were other places of worship close to Hope Street. I spoke to the caretaker at the Princes Road Synagogue, a magnificent Moorish Revival structure consecrated in 1874. Across the road from it was the sadly disheveled Welsh presbyterian church, and a few doors down the better kept Greek Orthodox church of St Nicholas—designed as a replica of the church—mosque of Vefa in Istanbul.
The neighborhood they stood in—Toxteth—was a home to the oldest black community in England, present here since the early eighteenth century. The German church nearby was locked, but I did manage to get inside the Nordic church down by the docks, next to the oldest Chinatown in Europe.
Further away was a terrace that had housed the first recorded mosque in the U.K. Liverpool may be Britain’s original multicultural city. In the early nineteenth century some forty percent of world trade passed through its docks: later the city was known as the “New York of Europe” for its vigor and diversity.
Much of its wealth in the eighteenth century came from slavery—a past confronted in the city’s International Slavery Museum. Slave ships gave way to steamers in the mid-nineteenth century as Irish refugees landed, fleeing famine. Later Liverpool boomed as the second city of the empire: the foghorns of ocean liners also boomed along its streets.
It was England’s gateway to the world, but as more immigrants set foot on its quays, it became less like other English cities. Liverpool was both a rich mix of identities and something proud and distinct in its own right. It was almost a city–state—a European Singapore.
For some, being “Scouse” transcended boundaries of religion and nationality. I often saw graffiti with the old slogan “Scouse not English.” According to a 2021 poll in the Liverpool Echo, some fifty-three per cent of respondents said they would not be supporting England in the final of the Euros. They had other allegiances.
Towards the north of the docks were two major football stadiums: Goodison Park and Anfield (which, like the two cathedrals, were set roughly seven hundred meters apart). Anfield, in particular, is legendary—but it is also unusual.
Old Trafford is surrounded by car parks, and the Etihad Stadium is the centerpiece of a vast sports complex. Emirates Stadium sits on a tarmac island ringed by railway lines, while Stamford Bridge is flanked by some of the most expensive property in the world.
For some, being “Scouse” transcended boundaries of religion and nationality.
Like all of these places, Anfield is home to a footballing titan, but it conforms to the old archetype of an English ground, its stands rising over the terraced houses out of which fans would pour on a match day. It stood at the heart of a community. After the war, the city beyond the stadium went into decline and by the 1980s had reached its lowest ebb.
Containerization had decimated Liverpool’s docks. Unemployment soared. A heroin epidemic took hold. Liverpool City Council was at war with the Thatcher government in London, furthering a rift. Amid the urban decay, Liverpool FC continued to soar under their manager, Kenny Dalglish, winning trophies and giving citizens something to be proud of—in this context, Hillsborough hit the city hard.
On Sunday, 16 April 1989, the club opened its doors at noon and became the focus of the “Anfield Pilgrimages.” Over the week of mourning that followed, people from Liverpool and beyond flocked to Anfield—it, rather than the scene of the disaster, offered itself as a place of pilgrimage. The focus of their grief was the stand beloved of home supporters: the famous Spion Kop.
According to the Catholic Pictorial:
Liverpool became a Three Cathedral City on Hillsborough Sunday. In addition to the Metropolitan and the Anglican we added the Anfield Cathedral with its two acre liturgically green sanctuary and the Kop altar bedecked with countless flowers and festooned with red and blue stoles and albs [scarves and shirts] which had been sacrificed by the laity in memory of their dearly departed. The cloisters approaching the Anfield Cathedral were crowded all day Sunday, the only sound breaking the silence being the tread of the pilgrims’ feet approaching the main door of the Cathedral, the Bill Shankly gates.
Inside the stadium, rival Everton supporters had left scarves and shirts in solidarity. It was not unusual to see grown men crying. Religion and football blurred: players and coaching staff had the job of consoling people, serving almost as priests to mourners.
It was a place where the goalposts had been changed—indeed, they had been covered in flowers. Anne Eyre made the pilgrimage to Anfield that week, and has written extensively about the events.
“That is what happens with collective trauma,” she told me.
People go to where it feels right, and not even in a conscious way. It was instinctive: their home was the ground. Both the cathedral and the stadium were, in a sociological sense, sacred—spaces set apart for dignity and respect. They had unspoken rules. You knew they were sacred even if you weren’t a Liverpool fan, or even if you weren’t Christian.
Over a week in 1989 a million pilgrims came to Anfield, catching trains and buses from near and far, walking the last leg among the terraced houses to the stadium in a sad echo of match days.
The Anfield pilgrimages had a lasting effect on the club. Two flames were incorporated into the club’s badge in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, and a real eternal flame was placed at the permanent Hillsborough memorial to the 97 victims, under the Main Stand. Through years of grief and injustice it became a shrine.
Anne Eyre has since cultivated a field of expertise in trauma and disaster management. She now lives in Coventry and feels in exile from her spiritual home in Liverpool, but remains part of the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance (HSA).
A year before she spoke to me, she had been on a charity walk around Liverpool organized by another survivor, Mike Wilson. It was partly to raise money for the HSA, but it also brought about a sense of togetherness. They had started at Anfield, worked their way around the city—passing Goodison Park, following the Mersey north, veering inland to Aintree racecourse, returning to their starting point twenty miles later. Pilgrimage was the right word to describe the walk.
I’ve now realized, personally speaking, I’m never going to heal. But things like this can make a difference – and I can evidence- base it with trauma research. Things like making connections with people, the ability to ritualize and commemorate an event. To continue to make meaning. Pilgrimage is about making sense of something. But it is also about making meaning.
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Mike Wilson sent me a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, detailing the 265-mile walk he was planning from Nottingham to Liverpool.
It was not an ordinary map: nor were there coordinates. Rather, it was a list of forty-one sports clubs and the distances between them. Most were football clubs; a few were cricket clubs. There was a smattering of rugby union and rugby league.
Collectively this archipelago of grounds formed an upside-down U shape—leading from the banks of the Trent at the City Ground (home of Nottingham Forest), reaching its northern extent around Elland Road (Leeds United) and Valley Parade (Bradford City), and then turning south-west across the Pennines to the Mersey.
There were titans of world football en route, and there were also teams from the seventh rung of the pyramid, where the stands were just four rows deep. Listed on the spreadsheet they sounded almost like Saturday afternoon scores: “Blackburn Rovers: 10.42 miles, Preston North End: 3.53 miles.”
Mike worked in IT for a bank—but much of his time was dedicated to organizing charity walks between sports clubs. He knew these grounds from previous events. There was Sheffield FC, the oldest football club in the world, who made coffee whenever the fundraisers walked through. Accrington Stanley, which gave them a ball and let them have a kickabout. Sheffield Wednesday were always helpful.
Mike had organized and undertaken three walks from Hillsborough to Anfield (2012, 2014 and 2019), but the thirty-fifth anniversary walk in 2024 would be different, with the teams made up of Hillsborough survivors. They would raise money for the HSA.
Teams walked in a relay as a support minibus travelled alongside them, swapping participants in lay-bys, petrol stations, Costa Coffees. Mike knew survivors who would not want to go to stadium 8 of 41: who had never been back to Sheffield.
According to the spreadsheet, they were due to arrive at Hillsborough at a 5.35 on a Thursday morning. The schedule allowed a ten-minute stop. They would arrive at Anfield at 2:45 the following Sunday afternoon: Mike said he often went quiet on the approach to the stadium. Even though it was a place some went week in week out, it came with a ‘different feeling’ when you walked from afar and stood by the flame.
“When you kind of do something like this it will feel like a pilgrimage,” said Mike. ‘It’s very much about solidarity. You’ve these people come from very different walks of life—dockers, tradesmen, teachers – and they understand what each other have been through. It will feel like we’re bringing something home. What it is, I don’t know.’
Many other Liverpool fans had made pilgrimages between Hillsborough and Anfield over the years. Some hikers had taken a direct route through the Dark Peak, passing under the summit of Mam Tor and the Great Ridge, ending at Anfield a symbolic 97 miles later. Cyclists too traversed the Pennine passes. I knew many of the routes they had taken.
But I felt this was not my road to walk. Mike crossed the Woodhead Pass with his dad and a friend on 15 April 1989, travelling from Manchester, where he had been working at the Co-op. His father, David, was a headmaster—Liverpool born and bred, having attended Dovedale Primary School and then teaching there in the years after John Lennon and George Harrison left.
Mike said his closeness to his father was the reason he had escaped the worst of the trauma suffered by other Hillsborough survivors, a large number of whom had tragically taken their own lives.[/pullqoute]
Mike had a plan to get the best view at Hillsborough. There was a curved section of the ground which he describes as being “like a Subbuteo stand,” accessed via the Leppings Lane entrance. They got only as far as Pen 4, at which point “you went where you went.”
Mike was twenty-four then: he was agile, found a railing and ultimately helped others clamber over. He was separated from his dad: it was 50 minutes before they saw each other again. Later that day, they drove back over the Woodhead.
In the village of Tintwistle, where the Pennine moors slope down to green farmland, Mike remembered old ladies placing telephones on occasional tables, with home-made signs inviting fans to call home. He remembered everything that day, though not quite as much as his father, who was “meticulous” in his memory, down to the color of the houses in Tintwistle. In old age, his dad remembered the small details of Hillsborough long after he had forgotten his granddaughter’s boyfriend’s name.
Mike said his closeness to his father was the reason he had escaped the worst of the trauma suffered by other Hillsborough survivors, a large number of whom had tragically taken their own lives. Father and son spoke to each other almost every year on 15 April.
Mike knew it affected his father deeply, but he never saw him cry, and described him as his “rock.” At the age of eighty-three David turned up unannounced on the final stage of the twenty-fifth anniversary walk from Hillsborough to Anfield.
‘He could barely walk to the kitchen at home—but he insisted he was going to walk that half a mile from Everton to Liverpool. He couldn’t walk again for about three weeks after that.’
David passed away in 2022—part of the reason that Mike wanted to do a walk in 2024 was so that he could sponsor a stage of the walk in his memory. Although the end destination was Anfield, the grounds on the way also were important—something like Stations of the Cross, where you could feel solidarity from rival clubs, and compound the sense that you were not walking alone. It seemed important to get inside and get a photo by the pitch.
‘When we’re at a ground—doing a photo with a banner with the names of people who were at Hillsborough—it means something,’ said Mike. “It means that they’re there: they’re with you.”
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On This Holy Land: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain by Oliver Smith is available via Pegasus.
