A new stadium and Ancelotti sticking around will give Everton fans real grounds for optimism
FOR a club whose fans sing about knowing their history, the past week has been enough to make their hearts soar.
Everton killed an albatross that has hung around their neck for almost a generation by winning for the first time this century at Anfield.
Days later, they got the go-ahead to build a gamechanging stadium that could deliver the kind of future they took for granted not that long ago as one of English football’s Big Five clubs.
Approval by Liverpool City Council of their £500million, 52,888-seater dockside ground brings certainty and relief to a club which has tried to escape from historic, but decaying, Goodison Park for the past 25 years.
With approval for BramleyMoore Dock, a state-of-theart ground in a spectacular setting, Evertonians can dare to believe they are laying the foundations to compete with the best again.
If that belief needed bolstering it came from the man they hope will still be around when they move to that new home in 2024, Carlo Ancelotti.
As players and fans celebrated their first Anfield win since 1999, he offered the perspective you would expect from one of the world’s top coaches: “Our target is not beating Liverpool but to be playing European football next season. We are working to be where Liverpool is now – one of the top teams in Europe.”
In other words, after managing in football’s biggest capitals, just winning an Anfield derby is not the kind of history he came to Merseyside to make.
Fortunately for Evertonians the ambition to do much better is shared by Farhad Moshiri, who took ownership of the club five years ago this week.
The billionaire has lived up to his promises by underwriting massive losses and pumping more than £400m into the club, albeit with little to show for it thus far. But no footballing juggernaut is turned round overnight.
The crucial component was a world-class manager, which Moshiri thought he’d found in Ronald Koeman, then Marco Silva, but hadn’t.
Hiring Ancelotti against all the odds, and Marcel Brands as director of football, changed the landscape.
Last summer’s signings of James Rodriguez, Allan, Abdoulaye Doucoure and Ben Godfrey, in the midst of a revenue-battering pandemic, was a statement of intent. A corner turned after some of the overpriced disasters of recent years. Like many teams this season Everton lack consistency.
Their home form has been poor but they’ve won eight on the road, putting them on the same points as Liverpool with a game in hand, and in the race for the top four.
With or without the Champions League next season there are reports Moshiri will give Ancelotti £100m in the summer to further transform the squad.
If so, that can only help the Blues achieve their next main objective off the pitch – ensuring the Italian signs a new contract that will see him lead Everton into that new stadium. The signs are good. Everyone who meets
Ancelotti near his Crosby home talks about how content he looks, and on the anniversary of his arrival in December he said: “I’m really happy because I think I found the right club, a family club. A lot of support behind us. I live in a nice area, so after one year I can say, I was lucky.”
Lucky is how Evertonians feel now after decades of illfortune. In finally leaving Goodison for a bigger, better stadium guided by a wealthy and ambitious owner they believe a new chapter can be written in a history starved of glory for too long.
If Ancelotti is still there by then, they will be in with a shout.