ALL SPORTS

Liverpool is a club drenched in tradition. Among England's biggest teams, it is the only one not to have moved to a new stadium in recent years or comprehensively refurbished its current home, Anfield. (Plans are on the drawing board for a new facility.) Until recently it also showed a resistance to some of the more overt commercialization, from club-themed television channels to personal seat licenses, which other Premier League clubs have embraced in an attempt to maximize revenue.
.Much of this traditionalism stems from the values instilled by the club's most iconic manager, Bill Shankly, who led Liverpool from 1959 to 1974. Mr. Shankly, who joked that as a boy he was so poor that he did not take a bath until he was 15, was a committed socialist who fostered the notion of Liverpool as a community club. Among other things, he created Liverpool's "boot room ethos," a sort of in-house apprenticeship aimed at producing future coaches in his own image. Indeed, in the 25 years following his retirement, Liverpool had five different managers (a remarkable total, given the rapid coaching turnover at most clubs). Each was either a "boot room" graduate or a long-time Liverpool player.