Bill, John and Johan: When Leicester City won at Liverpool
Liverpool were the dominant force of English football in the 1970s and 1980s. Anfield was their fortress and their longest unbeaten home run of the century came right in the middle of their dominance, between 1978 and 1980.
The Reds went 63 games without defeat at home ahead of the visit of bottom-of-the-table Leicester City for Anfield’s first game of 1981.
You can trace Liverpool’s success in the 1970s and 1980s back to the appointment of the former Preston North End right-half Bill Shankly as manager in December 1959.
The Reds had been a second division club for five seasons and had only won the top flight once in the previous 36 years. A couple of third-place finishes prefaced promotion as Division 2 champions in 1962. In their first season back, they finished 8th.
This was a golden period for Leicester City, who ended that 1962/63 season above Liverpool in 4th place. The two teams were converging. Although both were packed with talent, Liverpool had a couple of aces up their sleeve: Bill and The Beatles.
Earlier this year, Liverpool ran a feature in their matchday programme on how Bill Shankly and The Beatles made Liverpool the centre of the universe. But even as Liverpool was swiftly becoming the musical capital of the UK, Leicester still had the upper hand when the two met on the field.
Tucked away in one of the paragraphs is a reference to “bogey team Leicester City”. It’s an accurate label.
While The Beatles’ debut single came out the day before Leicester beat the English champions Ipswich Town away from home, the following Saturday saw Leicester thump Liverpool 3-0 at Filbert Street. The Beatles’ debut album came out five months later in March 1963, the same month Leicester beat Liverpool at Anfield. Ken Keyworth and Davie Gibson gave the Foxes a 2-0 win.
Between October 1962 and October 1964 Leicester won six of the seven games between the two sides, including all three in 1963 away from home - March’s win was followed with another triumph at Anfield in November, sandwiching an FA Cup semi-final win at Hillsborough.
It’s well-documented that Shankly took inspiration from the tactical “total football” innovations of Leicester management duo Matt Gillies and Bert Johnson during those victories over his side.
This helped Liverpool to the First Division title in 1964 and 1966, while Leicester were left to look back on an era of being “nearly men”, failing to turn promise into their own league win and losing in the FA Cup final in both 1961 and 1963.
Liverpool’s success took them into Europe, where they prospered. Only a spectacular semi-final second leg turnaround from Inter Milan at the San Siro denied them a European Cup final on their debut in international competition. Shankly described the game as “a war” and Liverpool’s players felt cheated by the referee’s decisions as Inter came back from 3-1 down in the first leg to win 4-3 on aggregate.
They were runners-up in the European Cup Winner’s Cup the following year, losing the Hampden Park final to Borussia Dortmund in extra time. This setback came a week after securing a return to the European Cup by winning the 1966 First Division title.
In the early hours of 7th December 1966, The Beatles were finishing up in the studio at Abbey Road recording When I’m Sixty-Four. It was a song ten years in the making, one of the earliest Paul McCartney began to write as a 14-year-old in 1956.
Later the same day in Amsterdam, Liverpool came up against another prodigiously talented teenager. His name was Johan Cruyff, and he tore them apart. The game was played in dense fog, while Liverpool’s players faced similar problems to those posed by Gillies and Johnson’s Leicester. The structure of the opponent was not what they were used to.
In Inverting the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson explains the surprise felt by the Reds:
“Within the Ajax model, players derived their meaning, their significance, from their interrelationship with other players.
The first signs that something special was coming together at Ajax came in 1966, when Liverpool were hammered 5-1 at De Meer.”
It was a shock result and Shankly proclaimed that Liverpool would win the second leg 7-0 in response.
Instead, Cruyff would score twice at Anfield in a 2-2 draw that dumped Liverpool out of Europe. In his 2016 autobiography, My Turn, Cruyff said of that return game:
“I stood on the pitch at Anfield with goosebumps, because of the atmosphere. My happiness at our progress was matched only by the impression Anfield had left on me; from that evening English football had captured my heart.
I had never seen anything like this – the passion for the game, and how much the fans wanted their team to win, and it made me think that one day I would like to play in England.
Unfortunately that dream didn’t come to pass, because in those days borders were still closed to foreign players. Even today I still think that was a terrible shame.”
Cruyff had burst into the English consciousness in 1966, the year of England’s sole World Cup triumph, but it was the 1974 World Cup that marked the pinnacle for him and his country in many people’s eyes.
David Winner, the author of the definitive book on the subject, Brilliant Orange, once said: “The Dutch team of 1974 is often compared to The Beatles with Johan Cruyff as the John Lennon character.”
Of course, the Netherlands lost in the 1974 World Cup final and, as such, share more in common with 1960s Leicester City than 1970s Liverpool.
The connection between Cruyff and Lennon appears in Inverting the Pyramid too, as part of a longer section on the cultural reasons for Ajax and the Netherlands’ tactical innovation.
Jonathan Wilson suggests: “It is no coincidence that it was in the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969 that John Lennon and Yoko Ono celebrated their marriage with a week-long ‘bed-in’.”
In the meantime, Leicester and Liverpool’s fortunes had diverged again. Exactly a decade and a day after losing to Leicester in the 1963 FA Cup semi-final, a goalless draw between the two sides at Anfield secured the 1973 First Division title for Liverpool. It was both continuation and turning point - their third title under Shankly but their first for seven years; only their fourth for 50 years but the first of 11 in 18 years.
Cruyff had left Ajax for Barcelona in 1973 and would become an icon in Catalonia as both player and manager. Departing the Nou Camp as a player in 1978, he had brief spells in the US with Los Angeles Aztecs and Washington Diplomats before a return to Europe beckoned.
His opportunity to play for Liverpool had passed him by. But the chance to run out once more at Anfield? Perhaps not.
In January 1981, Liverpool’s first home league opponents of the year were trying to sign the 33-year-old Johan Cruyff.
But would Cruyff come to Leicester?
The Foxes manager at this time was, like Shankly, a tough Scotsman - Jock Wallace. Upon taking the reins at Filbert Street, Wallace was in bullish form and he had the Reds in his sights:
“Liverpool was taken out of the doldrums by Shanks. I hope that I can do the same for this Club. If honesty and endeavour mean anything in this game, then we have a chance. The players have got it. I think I’ve got it. My coaches have got it. I think this Club is heading for a great future. I really believe that.”
On the third day of 1981, Liverpool extended their unbeaten home run at Anfield in all competitions to 85 with a 4-1 FA Cup win over Altrincham.
Few turning up for the visit of Leicester on the final day of January could have expected the run to end that afternoon.
The match was sponsored by Bowyer’s Sausages and Pies. In the star draw the prize was a Hitachi clock radio. The programme cost 30p and featured photos of Sammy Lee and Phil Thompson on the front cover.
Leicester, missing promising young striker Gary Lineker through injury, were bottom of the table with just six league wins to their name. The first of those had come on the opening day, however, a surprise 1-0 win over Liverpool.
There would be no clean sheet for Mark Wallington in the return fixture, as his own team-mate Alan Young headed past him after 15 minutes to put Liverpool into the lead.
The hosts pushed for a second but Wallington was in inspired form and Leicester began to threaten in the second half, attacking the Kop end. Thankfully for the Foxes, Wallington’s opposite number, the England goalkeeper Ray Clemence, made a rare error to help draw the visitors level.
The game wasn’t televised live but Clemence appeared on Granada’s Match Night highlights show and was grilled by a young Elton Welsby on whether he was at fault for Leicester’s leveller.
“I was at the fault for the equalising goal, yes. The ball was crossed to the far post. A ball that I should have caught.
Unfortunately I palmed it down and then lost my footing and instead of diving on the ball, I think it was their number seven ran in and hit it into the net.”
That number seven, the 24-year-old Pat Byrne, was one of the senior members of the team, whose average age was just 22. The youngest, 17-year-old Paul Friar, had been 3 years old when Cruyff dazzled Anfield in 1966.
The winner came from another young star, the 22-year-old Scottish striker Jim Melrose, who would later help bring another famous Lennon to Leicester in his post-playing career as an agent before becoming head scout at the club under Martin O’Neill between 1996 and 2000.
In the Liverpool Echo’s match report, Leicester’s old tag as the Reds’ bogey team was restored thanks to the league double despite Leicester not having won any of the 13 encounters between the sides prior to that campaign.
“In a sensational hangover from their derby defeat, Liverpool lost their three year unbeaten home record at Anfield. Their bogey team Leicester, who had already beaten them earlier this season, finally did it and no one could query the justice of the result.
Liverpool’s fans, much criticised in recent weeks for their failure to support the team, gave the players a tremendous reception. The atmosphere was surprisingly electric for a game against a bottom of the table team.
The small contingent of Leicester supporters were now in full voice and out-shouting the Kop, who became quieter and quieter as Liverpool’s play deteriorated. Leicester’s young side sensed the champions were there for the taking.
With both sides committed to out-and-out attack, the match was exciting, but Liverpool’s inability to hold Leicester’s lively youngsters boded ill for the future. It was a sad way for Liverpool’s record to go yet none could deny Leicester were much the better team on the day.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to convince Cruyff. He instead headed to the sunny Spanish coast to play for Levante. Jock Wallace’s young Leicester side were relegated.
Despite Shankly’s infamous claim that football was more important than life or death, Liverpool saw far more turbulent and emotional events than the loss of a long unbeaten home record in 1981. In July, the heavy-handed arrest of the Jamaican photography student Leroy Alphonse Cooper precipitated riots in the suburb of Toxteth.
There were also two significant memorial services held at Liverpool Cathedral that year. The first, a peculiar multi-religious affair in March, was held to commemorate the life of John Lennon after his murder in New York City. The second, in November, was for Bill Shankly.
On Boxing Day 1984, Gary Lineker struck the winner as Leicester won at Anfield. He would remain both on Merseyside and in blue the following season with Liverpool’s rivals Everton, scoring in both Merseyside derbies including a 2-0 win at Anfield - his final goal at the famous ground.
Although Cruyff didn’t become a team-mate of Lineker at Leicester, he would go on to be Lineker’s manager at Barcelona before the decade was out. And when Cruyff Court was opened in New Parks in September 2021, an initiative established through The Cruyff Foundation, Lineker was part of the delegation to mark the occasion.
In March 2016, the two most common searches on one pronunciation website were people trying to find out how to pronounce ‘Cruyff’ and ‘Leicester’. The former had just died at the age of 68. The latter were about to become Premier League champions for the first time, beating Liverpool by four years.
When Leicester secured the Championship title at Deepdale in April this year ahead of a return to famous stages like Anfield, it was perhaps fitting, given the tactical innovation integral to the success, that the celebrations took place in the Bill Shankly Kop.
And when the team runs out under the This Is Anfield sign, they may well be wearing a shirt commemorating the Ice Kings of the early 1960s that helped influence Liverpool’s greatest era.
