As the Merseyside derby looms large, has the city of Liverpool lost touch with its football roots?

It is repeated so often Liverpool is a hotbed of football that it has become an accepted truth but beyond the appetite for the Premier League, is that really the case anymore?

Two children knock a ball about in the shadow of Goodison Park (Getty)

Affixed to the clubhouse wall at Bootle FC, just around the corner from the world famous Aintree Racecourse, is a white plaque which details all of the title winners, the cups and the league cups from the Crosby and District Sunday Football League. One of the names that appears several times at the start of the 1980s is Merton Villa, the team run by Philly Carragher, father of Jamie.

While the plaque acts as a celebration of life, it is also there as a reminder of mortality. From the competition’s beginning in 1967, it ran for 47 seasons before disbanding in 2014 when despite running costs increasing year on year, the standard of pitches declined and the number of referees reduced. From there, player numbers shrank, the organisation waned and clubs left for other leagues as far away as Southport – despite the associated travel and time sacrifices.

Across the city is Whiston Juniors, the place where Steven Gerrard played his first games as a child. Last week, the club started a crowdfunding page to try and raise £10,000. “We are desperately in need of pitch renovations, including a new drainage system and equipment to maintain the pitches to provide a place to play football for the whole community even during the winter months,” the page explains. “We are also in need of new kit for each age group from under-7s through to under-17s.”

As of Wednesday morning, before Gerrard was made aware of the drive, the page had raised just £140 ahead of its conclusion in 18 days’ time. There is no suggestion that a celebrated name from the region like Whiston Juniors will immediately go the same way as a respected competition like the Crosby and District Sunday Football League if it does not succeed in its quest this month. Yet as Kenny Saunders, who runs the Save Grassroots Football campaign from his home in Liverpool, says, “there is a breaking point and something will give eventually.”

It is Merseyside derby weekend, of course, and though there have been contrasting fortunes for Everton and Liverpool on the pitch this season, some progress feels like is being made by both off it.

While Everton are closer than they ever have been to finding a way out of Goodison Park, the move to a new stadium at the Bramley Moore dock, however, is being made possible because of a loan from Liverpool City Council. The mayor, Joe Anderson, has insisted this will benefit the city in the long-run because it will regenerate a deprived borough and in theory help the council improve living standards through the interest repayments and subsequent employment.

Saunders is not alone in wondering where Farhad Moshiri, Everton’s billionaire owner, fits into all of this. Privately, Moshiri believes it will be better for Everton the sooner the club learns to exist independently, yet he surely also knows he is taking fewer risks even though he is securely positioned to take more than anyone else. “Will any of the council revenue drip down into the grassroots game, the level that needs it most desperately?” Saunders wonders. Though the council was asked this question earlier this week, they did not offer a response.

Everton are set to move to a new stadium at the Bramley Moore dock (Getty)

The sharpest reflection of the imbalance between the city’s Premier League clubs and its amateur levels is over in Kirkby, where it was announced in February that Knowsley Council had agreed to sell 40 acres of land for just £160,000 so that Liverpool could build a new training facility costing £50m.

In the 1990s, Kirkby, a town with a population of just 40,000, had two Sunday leagues and a Saturday league with four divisions in each organisation. Phil Thompson had managed the famous Falcon side when he was captaining Liverpool to European Cup glory while John Coleman, the Accrington Stanley manager currently top of League Two, had played some of his first games on the pitches flanked by the lanes of Arbour and Simonswood where Liverpool – the team he supports – will soon move into. Today, like in Crosby and Bootle, there is no competitive adult amateur league in Kirkby and this has ultimately made it possible for Liverpool to purchase the space. Nobody really uses it anymore – not like they once did.

“It feels like the Premier League is accelerating in one direction and the amateur game is accelerating in another,” Saunders says, ruefully. He started Save Grassroots in 2011 after Sefton had announced its intention to cover shortfalls in the council budget by raising annual pitch fees. Saunders helped quash that proposal but within three years the Crosby League had vanished. According to its website, the campaign now aims to “impose a 5 per cent levy on The Premier League’s existing £8.3bn combined revenue from UK and international TV deals to be re-invested back into grassroots football.”

The gulf between the top and bottom of the pyramid appears to be increasing with each passing year (Getty)

Saunders understands the problems facing grassroots football is multi-layered: that it isn’t solely the fault of the big clubs it has turned this way. He acknowledges that Liverpool City Council, for example, has been under immense pressure to find creative means of generating revenue since the Conservative government came to power in 2010 and started squeezing local authorities – particularly ones like Liverpool, which consistently identifies with the opposition in a wider political sense.

Any discussion about the condition of grassroots football, though, cannot be without the impact of Premier League academies on the landscape of the junior game, with professional clubs hoovering up talent as young as five. Statistically, 99.8 per cent of them don’t make it. There are no statistics that reflect how many are returning to the game following the whiplash of failure at the youngest age groups.

“It breaks the kids and the parents,” Saunders says when speaking about the theme of rejection. “Football surely loses a lot of talent because judgements are made way, way too early. I know of stories where kids have given up on football because they’ve been rejected by a Premier League club without playing a single minute of junior amateur football. They’ve fallen out of love with the game before they’ve even kicked a ball in anger…”

Michael Ball, the former Everton defender, played in nine Merseyside derbies. A fortnight ago, he became one of the first players to help publicise Save Grassroots through his column in the Liverpool Echo. Ball is 38 now and watches his nephews in the Formby and Hightown leagues when he can, or “when the games are actually on,” as he says pointedly. “The pitches aren’t able to deal with the weather because there is limited funding from the council. They boys sometimes go three months without playing. In an attempt to get games on, they have tried moving venues to slightly better pitches but this has incurred more cost and placed more pressure on the decent pitches which have then become overused and boggy.”

Michael Ball in action for Everton during his playing days (Getty)

After leaving Everton, Ball played for Glasgow Rangers and PSV Eindhoven. When he moved to Holland, he discovered a clause in his contract that stipulated one per cent of the whole transfer deal went to the boys’ club where he started out. “You just think, ‘Why haven’t the FA thought about this themselves?’ There’s too much red tape. There has to be more common sense.”

Ball thinks the majority of professional footballers try their best to help junior clubs in England but this is not the long-term solution because it simply creates a situation where a minority of junior clubs’ benefit. “Football – nothing, really – will ever reach its potential purely through handouts from individuals,” Ball says. “The system needs to be better, some sort of plan, where there’s a collective responsibility – where everyone who is in a position to tries to help out.”

It is repeated so often Liverpool is a hotbed of football that it has become an accepted truth but beyond the appetite for the Premier League, is that really the case anymore? The FA argue more children and adults are playing on 3G surfaces than ever before – that preferences are changing because of society. But listen to those who work closest with grassroots and many others aside from Saunders think the changes are happening because of the increased costs of involvement and the lack of smart investment. In Liverpool, four new ‘hub’ facilities are in the process of being financed. Both Saunders and Ball agree that this will bring a new challenge. “Only those who can afford it will be playing in ten years’ time,” insists Saunders, whose final warning is ominous: “The most talented players don’t always come from the wealthiest areas.”

To support the Save Grassroots Football campaign, visit: www.change.org/p/government-impose-5-levy-on-the-premier-league-s-broadcasting-rights-back-into-grassroots