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With tears in his eyes, David Moores presented the family silver to Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
It was February 2007 and Liverpool FC had just exchanged hands with longtime Reds fan and majority shareholder Moores, finally completing the search for a buyer that had started about three years earlier.
“It is very difficult to think that it will no longer be my club,” he said at the time. With that said, I hand it over to safe hands.
“They do it in the long term because they involve their children so they can plan for the future.”
History, of course, would prove that those words are hopelessly wrong, but Moores felt deep down that he had made the right choice at the time.
Hicks and Gillett were in position, responding to the media in a crowded Anfield just a week after Dubai International Capital discovered they would not be the ones to buy the club.
“The shovel must be on the ground within 60 days,” it was stated in plans for a new stadium. The owners had obtained a £ 350 million loan with the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia.
Of that figure, £ 105 million was immediately deposited in the club’s books, and the remaining 245 million were taken over by Kop Holdings, the company created by the new owners when they bought the club.
At the end of his reign, Liverpool would pay around £ 100,000 a day in interest as the administration’s threat approached.
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The language of Hicks and Gillett, in 2007, more than hinted that they were relatively new to soccer, but with a team portfolio that included the Montreal Canadiens, Dallas Stars, and Texas Rangers, the American duo had extensive experience in other sports, at least.
Hicks, however, had been burned before in the soccer world. In 1999, he had partnered to own Cruzeiro and Corinthians in Brazil before leaving four years later.
After legal disputes and financial problems, Hicks left without keeping the promise of a new stadium. History would sadly repeat itself at Anfield.
But in February 2007, few could have predicted how catastrophically wrong the next three and a half years would prove to be off the field for the Reds.
Rafa Benítez, in his first transfer window with Hicks and Gillett in charge, was backed in the market. The Liverpool manager had trimmed a frustrated figure in the wake of his team’s final Champions League loss to AC Milan in Athens and knew investments were needed.
He implored them to make a statement in the summer 2007 window. They responded with sanctioning deals for Fernando Torres, a club record, at £ 20 million: Ryan Babel (£ 12 million) and Yossi Benayoun (£ 5 million), while Lucas Leiva and Andriy Vornonin arrived from Gremio and Bayer Leverkusen, respectively.
(Image: Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)
Hicks and Gillett put money where their mouths were, but it wouldn’t be capital out of their own pockets that would be used to bolster the squad. By November of that year, the cracks had begun to show.
Benítez went public with a surreal press conference when his brief answer to each question was that he was simply focused on training his players.
Fifteen times, in total, Benítez offered the same answer after being privately told that AC Milan’s Kahka Kaladaze was off limits to Hicks and Gillett.
In January 2008, Hicks and Gillett teamed up with Jurgen Klinsmann to replace Benítez as manager, despite the manager’s immense popularity among Liverpool fans.
“We try to negotiate an option as an insurance policy to have it [Klinsmann] become manager if Rafael went to Real Madrid or other clubs rumored in the press, “Hicks then insisted on ECHO.
“We were worried that we were going to lose Rafa, we had the intelligence that he would move to Real Madrid and we had the opportunity to speak with Jurgen as a potential candidate, so we had a meeting with the guy.”
Soon after, the group of Liverpool Spirit of Shankly supporters formed at the Sandon Pub, the club’s birthplace in 1892, to vehemently oppose American owners and the direction their club was headed.
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“The protests covered many aspects, from falling behind on the ground and in the parking lot of the main stand to mass marches and the big dig when we put a shovel in the ground in Stanley Park that Hicks and Gillett had been unable to do,” they said.
Gillett had met with SOS minutes before a planned march was to take place in 2008. He insisted that the club was in a safe financial situation and blamed the delays at the new stadium on a funding crisis caused by its banks and the credit crisis. .
Around 4,000 SOS members marched from Liverpool Supporters Club to a 2-1 victory over Manchester United.
“Our message is that we don’t want Hicks and Gillett,” said SOS spokesman Jay McKenna. “They should do what is decent and leave our football club.”
An old flame from the Dubai International Capital briefly threatened to reappear before it was discovered that the Hicks and Gillett relationship was increasingly breaking down.
In May of that year, construction of a new stadium was halted with Hicks and Gillett at war and unable to raise the £ 300 million needed for development.
More than a year had passed since the 60-day deadline set for the first step within the club had passed.
A few years later it was revealed that Liverpool had spent up to £ 35 million on design fees, legal and administrative costs regarding the unbuilt site that was supposed to house their new stadium.
As the club seemed to stumble from one public relations problem to another, angry fans continued to protest against the absent owners.
Dr. Rogan Taylor, founder of fan group ShareLiverpoolFC, wrote in August 2008: “I am ashamed of what is happening at my club, certainly since the inauguration of the Americans.
“There are around a dozen clubs around the world that have this genuine combination of local and global strength. But it is a dangerous situation.”
“This club is more vulnerable now than it has been in my entire 47 years of seeing it. It is a house of cards and a gust of wind can fly.”
Benítez continued to keep the Reds at the top of the game with Liverpool by making their title challenge more credible under his guidance in the 2008/09 season.
But while Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres and others delighted their fans with an exciting campaign, he was crumbling at high speed on the court.
Christian Purslow was appointed Managing Director in the summer of 2009 and was commissioned to find an investment of £ 100 million to satisfy creditors, as Xabi Alonso was sold for £ 30 million to Real Madrid.
His replacement Alberto Aquilani came in for just over half of that fee to £ 18 million during what would prove to be a dividing window for Benitez at Anfield as results plummeted.
In January 2010, Liverpool fan Stephen Horner sent a copy of an ECHO article to Reds board member Tom Hicks Jnr. The piece focused on the disadvantage in which Benítez was forced to work due to financial problems stemming from the mismanagement of the club’s owners.
Horner invited Hicks Jnr to comment and received a one-word response: “idiot.” Hicks Jnr then wrote, “Shit, damn it. Go to hell, I’m sick of you.”
The consequences resulted in the removal of Hicks Jnr from the board, but it was only the tip of the iceberg for the detested homeowners who practically did not exist at the end of the previous decade.
By April 2010, faced with overwhelming criticism, anger from Reds supporters around the world and, more pertinent to them, crippling financial problems, Hicks and Gillett faced British Airways President Martin Broughton to oversee the sale of Liverpool FC.
Once again Liverpool was looking for a buyer.
* Stay tuned for Part 4 where ECHO looks at the last six months of Hicks and Gillett’s reign before FSG’s arrival
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