The secrets behind You'll never walk alone, football’s most famous anthem | OneFootball

Anfield will again ring to You'll never walk alone on Tuesday as Liverpool host PSG in a Champions League quarter-final second leg after a 2-0 first leg.

L'Équipe recounts how a 2018 documentary traced its origins to 1909, when Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar’s Liliom became a Broadway hit after he fled wartime Europe.

In 1945, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein turned Liliom into Carousel, introducing the hopeful ballad to postwar America and later the 1956 film.

In early 1960s Liverpool, Gerry Marsden was captivated by the movie, recorded the song he called psalm-like, and saw it top the charts for five weeks.

With Anfield’s new PA playing the top 10 before kick-off, the track took root, and when it fell out of the list the crowd kept singing, securing its place as the Kop’s anthem.

It soon wove into Liverpool’s story, from European triumphs in the 70s and 80s to the Shankly Gates inscription. Tragedy followed, with Bradford, the Heysel and Hillsborough. Marsden’s 1985 charity single for Bradford returned to number one, and in 1989 Anfield was awash with red flowers after 95 died in Sheffield.

Others adopted it, among them Borussia Dortmund, Feyenoord and Kaiserslautern. Celtic claim first use in 1957 but have no proof. In 2004 Jane Hardwick said she led Old Trafford in 1958 to honour the 23 dead in Munich, and a 2007 book reached the same Old Trafford conclusion.

Source: L'Équipe