{"id":601931,"date":"2026-08-23T07:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T07:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601931\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T07:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T07:50:09","slug":"why-i-have-decided-to-quit-supporting-liverpool-after-50-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601931\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I have decided to quit supporting Liverpool after 50 years \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, a consortium backed by the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought a 38 per cent<\/a> stake<\/a> in Liverpool FC. This week, before the start of yet another Premier League season, I finally decided to stop supporting the club. <\/p>\n

I started supporting Liverpool<\/a> in 1976. In those 50 years, we lifted 11 league titles and six European Cups. In 1982, Liverpool drew my hometown, Dundalk FC, in the second round of the European Cup. I saw Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Graeme Souness a stone\u2019s throw from the house in which I grew up, in which my mother still lives. <\/p>\n

Since 2007, I\u2019ve lived in Manchester and Sheffield. Getting the train over to Lime Street on match days, texting my son and brothers from the ground, having a pint in The Flat Iron surrounded by all the GAA<\/a> county flags, has meant more to me than I can adequately describe. Put it like this: Liverpool feels the nearest to home an Irishman living in England can get. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing this wearing the jersey I bought in June 2019 for the night of the Champions League<\/a> final. I\u2019ll wear it until this article is complete and then no more. <\/p>\n

The main sponsor emblazoned across my jersey is Standard Chartered, the insurance company. Its chief executive Bill Winters recently referred to 8,000 workers set to lose their jobs to AI as \u201clower-value human capital\u201d. <\/p>\n

In Red Card: English Premier League sportswashing of Israel<\/a>\u2019s atrocities against the Palestinians, a report published this May by the charity War on Want, Standard Chartered is listed among six companies \u201cenabling Israel\u2019s atrocities with finance and fuel\u201d. <\/p>\n

This season\u2019s jerseys include the logos of Axa and Expedia. The former retains investments in suppliers of military equipment used in Gaza<\/a>. On the latter\u2019s website, with just a few clicks you can book a holiday rental in West Bank settlements designated illegal under international law. <\/p>\n

Wearing these jerseys, of the clubs we love, we make ourselves sandwich-boards for their sponsors. As the Red Card report argues, \u201cclubs are sportswashing the companies and normalising the atrocities. This is not only unethical but risks rendering them complicit in war crimes\u201d. In the report\u2019s league table of complicity, Liverpool come top.<\/p>\n

If those war crimes in which their sponsors are arguably complicit render the clubs potentially complicit as well, then does my support of the club make me complicit? Bit of a stretch, possibly. But can I unequivocally say no to that implication? No. <\/p>\n

\"InIn a report by the charity War on Want, Standard Chartered is listed among six companies ‘enabling Israel\u2019s atrocities with finance and fuel’. Photograph: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

And so, I hereby stop. I chose to do the very thing no Liverpool fan is meant to do \u2013 to walk alone. <\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to think this is a blip, that very soon I\u2019ll be back in the Kop. But the Bezos consortium has first dibs of buying Liverpool outright within the year.<\/p>\n

But why? Why do the billionaire class want to own football clubs such as Liverpool? The usual reasons are offloading existing debt, asset-stripping, using the brand\u2019s rich tradition to launder a dodgy reputation. Take your pick. <\/p>\n

In Bezos\u2019s case, it may be nothing more than wishing to win one over on his old adversary Elon Musk, who only last year expressed a desire to buy Liverpool. What everyone agrees on is that Bezos, Lakshmi Mittal and Eduardo Saverin probably know nothing of the club, its history and its current team, and really couldn\u2019t care less. <\/p>\n

Zarah Sultana, an Independent MP in the UK and herself a lifelong red, has taken to X to voice her objection to the news. <\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon is a central partner in Project Nimbus,\u201d Sultana writes, \u201cproviding cloud and AI services to the Israeli state. While Israel carries out a genocide against the Palestinian people, Amazon\u2019s technology helps underpin the infrastructure that makes it possible. And now that fortune is buying its way into Anfield.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiverpool is more than a business,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s a community. Supporters have a voice. We\u2019ve used it before: against the Super League, against ticket price hikes and against owners who forgot what this club stands for. We MUST use it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will fans rise up? Unlikely. On The Anfield Wrap, the thinking fan\u2019s platform and podcast, Karl Coppack lays out much the same horrifying evidence but ultimately concludes: \u201cI\u2019m weak and I\u2019ll always have my version of Liverpool to support, even though it directly contradicts the evidence of my own eyes. They can\u2019t touch that. I\u2019ll still support mine. Sometimes I wish I wouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond Project Nimbus, Bezos\u2019s gutting of the Washington Post is fundamentally authoritarian. His ongoing war with mayor Zohran Mamdani over delivery drivers\u2019 contracts and wages in New York should give the willies to all the brilliant people who staff our backrooms. He thinks Donald Trump\u2019s second term has been \u201cmore mature, more disciplined\u201d. Tell that to the children of Renee Good, or any of the families of victims of Ice killings. <\/p>\n

\"ConorConor O’Callaghan at Anfield for Liverpool match <\/p>\n

That such a person now co-owns more than a third of Liverpool FC, and could one day own it outright, is beyond the pale. That he and his gallery of ghouls might soon sit in the directors\u2019 box, in a city with such profound roots in the Labour movement and trade unions and human rights, is a bridge too far. <\/p>\n

And if this isn\u2019t a bridge too far, then nothing matters. Sign Andrew Tate and his little brother. Give Itamar Ben-Gvir a two-year contract: we could use reinforcements on the right. <\/p>\n

And no, I won\u2019t be supporting any other Premier League club. <\/p>\n

Arsenal, joint-second in the Red Card league table of complicity, have just announced a new sponsorship agreement with Deel, a US company which has supported and donated to the Israel Defense Forces. Manchester City, joint-fourth with their local rivals in that same table, is owned by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates, and the United Nations has long concluded that the UAE contributed financially to ethnic cleansing and genocide in Sudan.<\/p>\n

Support for these clubs is support for those horrors their owners in turn support. I\u2019ve been one of the millions, like yourself \u2013 yes, you reading this article right now \u2013 who turn a blind eye daily to this uncomfortable fact. Who give them our money. <\/p>\n

The clubs we\u2019ve all supported and loved are controlled by bad folks who patently know nothing about football, who care zilch for grassroots support and are doing everything in their unfathomable power to squeeze out season ticket holders forever, who make capital off the suffering of innocent people. <\/p>\n

If you can pretend otherwise, knock yourself out. I wish I could do the same, and continue to wear the red jersey out of blind sentiment, but I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u2666 Conor O\u2019Callaghan is a novelist and the author of Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War (2004)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, a consortium backed by the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought a 38 per cent stake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,1547,112],"class_list":["post-601931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liverpool-fc","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}