In a rare foray into the dizzy heights of the Premier League, Steve Sharman takes temporary leave from non-league groundhopping to join the prawn sandwich brigade and watch West Ham take on Liverpool from the posh seats at the London Stadium.
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It’s barely 2 pm as I warm my hands on a black americano and take my place at the very end of the surprisingly crowded platform at Chelmsford Station. Although kick-off isn’t for another three and a half hours, plenty of West Ham fans are already making the short journey from rural Essex into East London and the London Stadium to watch the struggling Hammers take on Arne Slot’s Liverpool juggernaut.
The rest of my crew have joined the train a couple of stops earlier and as I wait for the train to come to a complete stop, I’m greeted by their excitable faces peering out the window. Mark is the West Ham fan with the corporate tickets and when they’re not being used for work, he is generous enough to offer them out to our motley crew of school dads – and it’s an offer that is hard to turn down! Spencer and Rich are also West Ham fans and when I sit down next to them, the latter tries to put a claret and blue scarf around my neck.
No chance, pal!
As the train pulls out of the station I settle into my seat and we exchange post-Christmas pleasantries before getting down to the important business of score predictions. Rich, ever the optimist, predicts a narrow victory for the Hammers. The others aren’t so positive and I can’t help but wind them up by predicting a 6-0 Liverpool victory.
The weight of history is firmly on Liverpool’s side, with the side from Anfield having won 85 of the previous 152 meetings between the teams, in all competitions, and few would bet against them increasing that tally today.
Out With the Old, in With the New(ish)
West Ham is a club with a strong heritage. The Irons took residence at the London Stadium in 2016 and, whilst making sound commercial sense, the move was by no means universally popular. The Boleyn Ground – also known as Upton Park – was the East London club’s spiritual home, their fortress for over a hundred years. It’s somewhat tragic that there is barely any trace of the Hammers’ old home left, bar the Boleyn Ground Memorial Garden – the site has long since been used for housing development.
The days of coming out of Upton Park tube, dodging between market stalls and compact terraced housing and skirting around dangerous pubs on the way from the station to the ground are consigned to the past and today the walk to the ground is a gentrified, modernised version of old school East London. We leave the train at Stratford but instead of market stalls we walk through the heaving Westfield shopping centre, instead of terraced housing there are rows of towering apartment blocks, and instead of boozers that away fans could barely look twice at, there’s a theatre, and a Gordon Ramsey restaurant complete with fairy light-laden rooftop bar.
Green Street it is not.
However, leaving the nostalgic yearnings to one side and embracing a future designed to allow West Ham to compete at the top level, there’s no doubt that the Hammers’ new home stadium is, to someone more used to games with less than 500 people, pretty impressive. Set within the Queen Elizabeth Park, the London Stadium was originally built for the 2012 London Olympics. After being adapted for football post-event, the stadium – decked out in West Ham Colours – holds around 68,000 people in the classic bowl shape.
The Hammers have signed a ninety-nine-year lease on the Stadium and were required to fund just a fraction of the refurbishment, with Newham Council and the Government covering most of the costs. Again, it was a move that made sense, even if decisions made by financial heads in the boardroom are often at odds with the romantic and territoria fires burning in the hearts of supporters on the terraces.
It’s clear to see efforts have been made to acknowledge West Ham’s history and integrate the past into the present. For example, there is the statue of World Cup winners Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, and Martin Peters lifting the European Cup Winners Cup trophy located outside the Bobby Moore stand in the modestly named Champions Place, to complement the bronze statue of Moore, Hurst, Peters, and Ray Wilson which still stands near the old ground. The nod to history and past legends, in my view, sits comfortably alongside a more modern stadium.
This is Football?
Entering the stadium feels more like going to the theatre, or something else that posh people do, rather than going to football. There is no club committee member struggling to work the card machine on the single turnstile or handwritten line-ups on a well-weathered whiteboard here; instead, a man in a smart uniform holds the door open, another helps us scan tickets, and another shows us the way to the escalator. As we rise up, more pictures of historic moments from West Ham’s rich history hang from the walls and when we reach the glass doors at the top of the moving stairs, Mark is greeted by name and plenty of friendly smiles.
Inside the lounge, we are handed a complimentary programme and are shown to some seats where we settle in and order a round. There’s a range of food available but as much as the pie mash looks tempting and might be the appropriate location-specific choice, I stay true to form and order a cheeseburger.
Sitting near the entrance, we watch the faces come through the doors and I can’t deny I get swept up in the excitement of identifying ex-players and other celebrities as they come in. Some are dressed in club suits and are clearly working, others just seem to be here to watch the game. Former West Ham players Rufus Brevett, Marlon Harewood, and Zavon Hinds work the room, shaking hands, posing for photos, and having the same conversations on repeat.
I get most excited when bonafide legend Emile Heskey comes into the room, and he quickly falls into conversation with Paul Konchesky – both men had spells with today’s opponents Liverpool, although not at the same time. Eventually, I overcome the shame and embarrassment of a middle-aged man asking for a selfie and sheepishly ask them for a picture; I stand, with no small degree of self-consciousness, between the two whilst Rich – in hysterics at my awkwardness – takes the snap. It’s not every day you get to meet two former England internationals!
However, the biggest ripple of pre-game excitement comes when Frank Bruno makes an entrance. In his advancing years he’s not quite the physical colossus who made such an impact in the ring and I’m not 100% convinced it is him until he speaks – and then there is absolutely no doubt. Heskey is straight over to Bruno to shake his hand and there’s something touching about the deep respect shown by the footballer – hugely successful in his own career – to the former champion boxer.
This is Football
At about ten past five we order another beer but as the glasses land on the table, there is a mass exodus out to the seats. Turns out the kick-off is 5.15, not 5.30 as we thought, so we smuggle the beers out into the stands (how shall remain a secret in case any West Ham officials are reading), and are greeted by the customary pre-match bubble show. The Hammers are in their traditional claret and blue, and Liverpool are in all black. Given my preference for more affordable, more accessible non-league football, it’s been a good while since I’ve seen Premier League football; with Liverpool sitting on top of the tree at Christmas I’m excited to see in the flesh what elite football looks like.
The Reds start strongly, and even though there are over 62,476 packed into the London Stadium today – West Ham’s biggest crowd of the season so far – all the noise is coming from the away end. The visitors are very good; calm and controlled. It really does feel like the team and the fans know it is only a matter of time until they take the lead. They say teams are fashioned in the image of their manager, and Liverpool and their manager Slot epitomise this. With his lovely coat and unbelievably shiny head dazzling under the floodlights, the boss is calmness personified on the edge of his technical area, in stark contrast to the blood and thunder histrionics of his predecessor.
Although there are some very good players at the non-league level – players with professional careers behind them, young starlets gaining first-team experience, and everything in between – the major difference to the Premier League is the sheer speed of thought. It’s evident in the West Ham players but even more so in the Liverpool side; like a snooker player building a break, every player seems to be thinking two, three, even four passes ahead, all done at a double quick speed. It truly is impressive to watch.
Liverpool are clearly well coached and well drilled, an ominously efficient machine, casually stalking their prey until the time is right to spring into action with lethal effect. Brilliant as a team, individual players are also outstanding. There’s a lot of talk of ‘aura’ these days; whatever aura is, it oozes from every pore of Virgil van Dijk. The giant Dutchman is not only physically huge but he patrols the tramlines from the edges of the penalty box to the halfway line with such authority that it’s hard to imagine him getting ruffled by anything, ever.
After around half an hour of toying with their soon-to-be victims, Liverpool press the accelerator. Quick-fire goals from Luis Diaz, Cody Gakpo, and Mo Salah emphasise the gulf in class between the teams, and although Mohammed Kudus hits the post for West Ham in between, it’s hard to envisage a goal would have changed the course of the game. A deathly silence descends on the stadium after Salah’s goal, as half the home fans head for the bar and/or the toilet and the other half contemplate the potential humiliation that seems to be on the cards.
At the half-time whistle, a small chorus of boos rings out from those left in their seats, but even the criticism is half-hearted as resistance to the Liverpool machine seems futile, like trying to stop an avalanche with a windbreak. We head back into the warmth of the corporate lounge and order another pint, pose for photos with Frank Bruno, and I can’t help but marvel at the amount of staff working here, even just in this single lounge. They too function as a well-oiled machine and it really emphasises just what an enormous industry football is, and how many jobs a matchday creates.
The second half starts and West Ham brings on Niclas Füllkrug but it’s hard to see a player of his calibre troubling van Dijk. Liverpool continue to dominate and it’s no surprise when Trent Alexander-Arnold – another superb player – smashes in a fourth with an effort which was destined for the back of the net the moment it left his boot. With thirty minutes left, Liverpool are cruising in first gear. I lean over to Rich and mention this and he scoffs and suggests they’re not even out of neutral.
Hammer’s boss Lopetegui is extremely passive on the touchline; there’s no sense of urgency or passion, just an acceptance that his team have been thoroughly outclassed. Perhaps the Spaniard is already thinking about where his next job will be? By this stage, even the Liverpool fans are bored and with fifteen minutes left, there are a lot of empty seats around the stadium. By the time Diego Jota scores a Liverpool fifth, the ground is more than half empty, with many opting to beat the rush for trains at Stratford, rather than endure this clinical dissection of their team til the end.
Into 2025
So it’s Liverpool who end 2024 at the very top of English football. Three central pillars of Slot’s team – Salah, van Dijk, and Alexander-Arnold – are out of contract this summer, it will be interesting to see how contract negotiations, the overseas opportunities presented now the January window of opportunity is open, and all the associated noise affects the players. But, in this sort of irresistible form, it’s difficult to see any other outcome than a twentieth league title for the men from Merseyside.
West Ham, on the other hand, end the year on a low. The summer departure of David Moyes and the subsequent appointment of Julen Lopetegui was the change that many Hammers fans craved, however many of those same voices are now realising the grass is not always greener. Although there are enough poor sides in the Premier League to ensure West Ham will probably not be relegated this season, the lack of success for the new manager, combined with the injury picked up by Jared Bowen today, will mean this is likely to be an uncomfortable season for the Hammers.
Having spent most of my games this year hopping around non-league grounds in Essex (and following the FA Vase), this certainly was a fun way to end the year; a totally different way of watching football. Although the matchday experience of corporate hospitality and the sheer technical brilliance of Liverpool make it feel at times like watching a different game than going to Basildon on a freezing Tuesday night and watching twenty-two fellas kick lumps out of each other, the core elements of what makes football so special, still remain the same; meet some mates, have a pint, chew the fat, moan about the ref, and whatever the score, know we’re going to do it all again next week.
Whatever type of football we watch – whether elite-level Premier League football from the posh seats or exposed to horizontal rain, hopping around obscure non-league grounds, the game at the heart of it all remains the same. Strip away all the noise, and football is football.
And football is brilliant.
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