If you have been watching Arne Slot‘s press conferences, you will recognise the voice of journalist and Liverpool fan Mo Stewart. We sat down with Mo for an extended edition of My Liverpool Life.
My first Liverpool match was…
In the Worthington Cup as it was called back then, or League Cup as it is now, against Southampton in 2002 at Anfield.
We won 3-1 and I was sitting in the Kop. Patrick Berger scored a free-kick and I was sitting right behind the goal, and it looked like the ball was going to end up directly in my lap, but thankfully it went in the goal.
By that point I’d already been supporting Liverpool for the best part of 15 years. So it was very much a pilgrimage for me to come to that game.
There are loads of things about it I will always remember but yeah, it was a special day, even though it wasn’t exactly a packed house.
I became a Liverpool supporter because…
I feel like there’s quite a few people who look like me, who are around the same age as me, who will have a similar story, but we are all John Barnes babies.
I met him earlier in the summer, and I was very clear to point that out. I meant that metaphorically, he’s not actually my father!
My actual father is still there, doing a very good job as he’s done for the last 43 years, but when I first started watching football, I was kind of watching it only on TV because where we lived in Kent there wasn’t really much opportunity to go out and see live football.
Liverpool were the team who were doing very well, so they were on TV more often than others and when John Barnes joined, it kind of felt like this was it.
This was the moment where I was like, ‘OK, these are the guys I want to I want to follow’, because yes, he’d played for Watford before, but it was when he joined Liverpool really that everything really clicked into place.
He’s such a fantastic man to watch, such a brilliant player and his story was very similar to my story as in family comes from Jamaica, my family came from Jamaica; he was left-footed, I was left-footed.
I mean, his birthday is even the day before mine!
Have your love of Liverpool the club and Liverpool the city become entwined?
They have 100 percent become entwined, they come hand in hand as far as I’m concerned.
So before I moved here, my images of Liverpool were all about the football team. I mean, obviously I was aware of The Beatles, but they really were kind of almost like a background.
They almost felt like a band for everyone, they didn’t really feel specifically Liverpool to me in my young mind.
But seeing Anfield, seeing the crowd, seeing all of those things as a young kid, that really kind of made me think, ‘OK, this is where I want to be’.
And obviously in the good and in the bad times. I’m old enough to remember Hillsborough and all of the fallout afterwards with the scarves all across the Anfield pitch and the roses, and those were things where I felt really emotionally connected to the team.
I felt at home instantly so that only increased my desire to move here, and then when I finally did move here, everything felt perfect.
Has your job covering Liverpool changed the way you view football?
It hasn’t changed how I view football because frankly, that’s kind of how I’ve always viewed football – I have my dad to thank for that.
When we were younger, we’d sit down and we wouldn’t just watch Tottenham, my dad’s team, and we wouldn’t just watch Liverpool, or Leeds which is my sister’s team.
On a Sunday afternoon, we’d sit down and we’d watch Italian football, English football, French football, Spanish football or Scottish football.
And it was more about the love of the game, and not just the love of the game, but the love of how it is played by certain teams.
There was your AC Milans, my dad likes Real Madrid, even Celtic in the Henrik Larsson era – the teams who like to play great, fantastic flying football, they were the ones who we kind of stuck to, but the analytical side was always in there.
It has become more difficult at times, I have to admit. So a lot of the time when I’m working the game as a part of the media crew at the moment, because I work for American radio, so I’ve been sitting up in the radio gantry, I can’t cheer what Liverpool score and it’s difficult.
So I have to make sure that I enjoy it at the times, whether that means going home and rewatching the game or once the work side’s finished, going to the pub and having to chat with mates or even on shows like The Anfield Wrap, getting the chance to discuss it and talk it through.
The Liverpool match I would relive is…
The one that I first came into my mind is the obvious one, which is Istanbul, because it was just such a seismic moment for so many reasons.
That was my first summer living in Liverpool.
So being in and around the city at that time and getting to feel what it feels like to be in a European Cup final, because it’s not just about the team, it really becomes about the city because that at that point, it’s been 20 years since we’ve been in the European Cup final, so everything really felt alive.
Wherever you went around, you’d see posters, you’d see cardboard cutouts of Stevie and Carra in people’s windows and just the vibe around the place was so special.
And then obviously the game itself happens and the celebrations afterwards. I’ve got vivid memories of walking home from the city centre pretty much down Upper Parliament Street and down Smithdown Road, just walking through the middle of the road.
The Liverpool season I would relive is…
The treble season, 2000/01, because everything that we wanted to achieve, we did achieve, and the idea of being able to compete in three different competitions – four different competitions if you include the league.
That was also my first year at university in Stoke, so I was living in student halls and over the course of the season, lots of my other friends who weren’t into football, some of them friends who were supporters of other teams, kind of got swept up along in the emotion of it all.
It was just I would say six months where every time we won a game, it made me feel like we were going to win the next one.
The riding of the wave of ‘wow, you just never know what’s going to happen here’, that season was just very, very special to me.
If you could have a dinner party with three figures from Liverpool’s present and history, who would they be?
Well, I’ve actually been lucky enough to be at a birthday party with Jurgen Klopp at the club of couple of years ago and it was everything I’d hoped it to be. So yeah, he’s definitely in, 100 percent.
I have to be obvious and say John Barnes as well for all those obvious reasons already mentioned.
For a wild card, I want to say Daniel Sturridge because he’s just so much fun.
He genuinely is just like the kind of person you could have an absolutely awesome time with, no matter what you’re talking about, and he’s also someone who got a very astute football brain.
I’d love to speak to him about football and all that kind of stuff, but then we can talk about music, fashion and food as well.
Thanks again to Mo Stewart for his time. You can subscribe to his Substack here and his YouTube channel here.
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