Anfield

Anfield: The Stadium, the Neighbourhood, and What It’s Actually Like

Liverpool completed the expansion of the Anfield Road Stand in March 2025, adding 7,000 seats and bringing the total capacity to 61,276. This makes Anfield the fifth-largest ground in the Premier League. The expansion was contentious during construction - delayed, over-budget, and temporarily opened in stages - but the finished stand changes the experience of being inside the stadium. The noise, which was always the defining quality of Anfield, is louder.

You don’t need to attend a match to understand why this matters. The stadium tour is genuinely among the better ones in European football, and the walk through the tunnel with the “This Is Anfield” sign overhead is one of the few sports-venue experiences that lands even for visitors who have no particular attachment to the club.

The Stadium Tour

Tours run daily throughout the week and can be booked through the Liverpool FC website. The tour accesses the home dressing room, the manager’s dugout, the press conference room, the player tunnel, and the LFC Museum. The museum spans more than 130 years: cup finals, European nights, the Hillsborough memorial, and the trajectory from the First Division to serial Champions League participants. The exhibition is well-curated and does not avoid the difficult parts of the club’s history.

Book the tour in advance, particularly on weekends and during holiday periods when they sell out. Non-matchday tours typically last around 90 minutes and provide a quieter, more unhurried version of the experience than the matchday tours.

The Kop

The Spion Kop end of the ground was constructed in 1906 and named after the Battle of Spion Kop in South Africa, where a large number of men from Lancashire regiments died in 1900. The name became generic for steep terrace ends across English football. The Anfield version remained a standing terrace until the Taylor Report following Hillsborough enforced all-seater conversion in 1994. Kop supporters resist any romantic notion that the terrace atmosphere was better then. It was, but the change was necessary, and modern European nights at Anfield demonstrate that something remarkable survives regardless of whether people are sitting or standing.

Where to Eat

Homebaked is the bakery directly opposite the main stand on Anfield Road that has operated as a community cooperative since 2012. The scouse pies - a variation on the traditional Liverpool stew of beef, potato, onion, and root vegetables in shortcrust pastry - are good, seasonal, and sold from the window on matchdays at about the same price as two hours ago at the stadium. It is a genuinely local place that merits supporting.

The Sandon on Oakfield Road is the historically significant pub: Liverpool FC was founded at a meeting in the Sandon in 1892 when John Houlding, who owned the ground, fell out with Everton and formed a new club to fill it. The pub serves standard pub food and has a matchday atmosphere that starts building hours before kick-off. It fills completely; arrive early.

The Arkles on Anfield Road is the other reliable pre-match option, with food a cut above standard pub fare and a slightly younger crowd.

The Shankly Gates

The gates at the Anfield Road entrance, installed in 1982 and refurbished over the years, bear the Liverpool motto “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and honour Bill Shankly, who managed the club from 1959 to 1974 and rebuilt it from the Second Division to three league titles and two FA Cups. The phrase - a lyric from a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, adopted as a terrace song by Liverpool supporters in the 1960s - is now one of the most globally recognisable stadium chants in football. Saying it means something different depending on whether you know the history.

Stanley Park

The park between Anfield and the proposed new stadium site gives you the ground’s geography: the old industrial neighbourhood, the brick terraces, the park itself as the dividing line between Liverpool and Everton’s respective former grounds. Walk it before or after your tour for context the visitor centre doesn’t provide.

Attending a Match

If you can get a ticket, do. The Liverpool FC official app and website are the primary legitimate sources. The waitlist for season tickets is years long, but match-by-match availability exists for domestic cup games and some Premier League fixtures, particularly against lower-table opponents. Prices for home league matches start around £40-50.

The pre-match atmosphere from about two hours before kick-off is the thing most visitors don’t account for. The walk from Lime Street station takes 40 minutes through parts of the city that haven’t changed much in decades. The pubs fill in sequence. You hear the noise level rising as you approach the ground. The actual football, once it starts, may or may not justify the journey on sporting terms. The atmosphere will.

Wider Liverpool

Anfield sits in the north of the city, about a mile from Everton’s Goodison Park (currently in the final seasons before the club’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock is complete). The Albert Dock, the waterfront, the Beatles Museum, and the Walker Art Gallery are all 20-30 minutes south by bus or taxi. Merseyrail connects the city efficiently; a day pass is worth having.