thanks Shanks .....100
THE MAN
... no one greater in the history of
modern society , NO ONE! the TRUE man of the people, children should read his auto biography before they learn anything else,! shakespeare socrates and all the other "writers" ??? this man DID it... he created a global family bigger than most nations on this planet!! an exageration? well, I am happy to argue .... ======================----------------------
http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/143738-how-bill-shankly-changed-melwood
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Players enter through frosted glass doors embossed with a towering Liverbird when they arrive at Melwood nowadays.
ReplyDeleteSweeping past the plush charcoal-grey couches and widescreen TVs, they make their way through the main reception area, with its stone-grey tiles, wooden-panelled walls and white-washed ceilings.
A stairway reaches up to the left, where on the other side of a fort knox-style electronic door is the canteen, the manager's office and rooms where scouts, performance analysts and coaches pour over footage of current and potential players.
Back in the reception, the European Cup stands proudly, enshrined in a gleaming glass box, with a quote from Rafael Benitez stencilled underneath. It reads: "To me, being part of Europe's elite is central to this club's ethos."
But when Bill Shankly arrived at a dilapidated Melwood training ground in late 1959, Liverpool hadn't the faintest concept of what it meant to play in Europe - never mind expect a place at its top table as some form of birthright.
"It was a sorry wilderness," wrote Shankly in his autobiography 'My Story'.
"One pitch looked as if a couple of bombs had been dropped on it. 'The Germans were over here, were they?' I asked.
"Tom Bush, the old Liverpool centre-half, took my wife Ness and me round to look at houses for the players and we called to see the training ground at Melwood............to be cont...
...... "It was just a wilderness, but I said to Ness: 'Well, it's big and it can be developed. At least there is space here'."
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to imagine it now - as you pace in past the neatly trimmed grass verges, with Porsches and BMWs scattered about on the pristine tarmac.
But Melwood, Liverpool's home since the early '50s, was overgrown and falling into disrepair. Its centre-piece, an old wooden pavilion, stood alongside a crumbling air-raid shelter.
Inside, the facilities were woeful; there was no heating and the paint was peeling away from walls. Outside, things were no better.
The pitches were smattered with bare patches, divets and dirt, and Shankly observed how there were: "Trees, hills, hollows and grass long enough for Jimmy Melia to hide in standing up."
Melwood was essentially a cricket pavilion - a school called Saint Francis Xavier had once stood in its place in the leafy suburbs of West Derby.
Father Melling and Father Woodlock, two priests at the school, had even given Melwood its name when they merged their own together.
Their land was sold to Liverpool Football Club during the inter-war period and had been allowed to fall into disrepair right up to the point Shankly first set his eyes on it in December 1959.
"But that in itself didn't really matter, because the club didn't really use it much," explained Liverpool historian Stephen Done.
"Before Shankly, they made all the players come to the main stand car park at Anfield, and they did a lot of their work there.
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..... The new pavilion had suitable changing facilities installed for the Liverpool players. Shankly added in a gymnasium and a sauna, but he decided against having a place where players could eat.
ReplyDelete"I felt it was most important that, after training, the boys should have a cooling-off period before having a bath and a meal," explained Shankly.
"The 45 minutes between the end of training and arriving back at Anfield was just right. If you have a hot bath when you're perspiring, you perspire all day.
"Our system prevented the players from catching colds and it also made sure that they were not strangers to their home ground."
Looking around Melwood today it's hard to conceive of the place as being overrun and decrepit - but then again, walk into any club's training facility today and it's a far cry from the place's humble beginnings.
All clubs have had to revolutionise their training facilities to move on, but by the time Bob Paisley took over from Shankly in 1974, he had the foundations in place to go on and conquer Europe.
35 years today since Terry McDermott's header in the 7-0 rout of Spurs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOB7pcqBH-Y … - best #LFC goal ever?
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