The "Grand Old Lady" of English soccer is about to bid farewell to the men's game.
Goodison Park, the long-time home of Premier League team Everton, has staged more top-tier games than any other stadium in England. It was where Pele was kicked to pieces before losing a World Cup match with Brazil for the only time. It was where eight English league titles were won, and where several nerve-shredding escapes from relegation in the Premier League were completed.
Everton will leave Goodison at the end of this season to move to a new 53,000-seat stadium at nearby Bramley-Moore Dock. Sunday's visit b Southampton marks the final game in the team's home of 133 years and the occasion will be marked by what Everton is calling an "End of an Era" ceremony afterward.
The stadium will continue to operate instead in the women's game, as the new home of Everton Women.
Goodison wasn't always Everton's home Goodison Park has been the home to eight of Everton's nine title-winning campaigns. The first came somewhere you might not expect.
Everton became a professional club and played its first Football League fixture at Anfield — now the storied home of neighbor Liverpool — from 1884-92. The club's first league title was won there in 1891, with Everton matches watched by crowds of up to 20,000.
But a dispute with Everton's then-chairman, who owned the land, pushed club officials to buy a field just across Stanley Park and build a new stadium — Goodison Park.
It opened in 1892, staged an FA Cup final two years later and, in 1924, hosted an exhibition baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants on their world tour.
The architect Goodison Park is a celebrated example by the greatest architect of soccer's early years, Archibald Leitch.
The Scottish architect, who designed dozens of soccer and rugby venues in the early 20th century, started work at Everton with the Goodison Road stand in 1909. The huge construction was popularly compared to an ocean liner called the Mauretania.
The main Bullens Road stand is now 99 years old and still has the signature Leitch feature, crossed trusses on the upper-tier balcony.
What Leitch didn't build was another unique feature of Goodison Park — St. Luke's Church in one corner of the ground next to the Gwladys Street end that's home to Everton's noisiest fans.
Pele's World Cup troubles at Goodison
Pele played in 14 games at four different World Cups from 1958 to 1970 and lost only one: at Goodison.
Brazil was based at Goodison for its group-stage games in 1966 and the two-time defending champion's superstar was targeted for rough treatment. Pele scored in an opening 2-0 win over Bulgaria but was too injured to then face Hungary, which won 3-1.
Pele came back for a decisive game against Eusebio's Portugal and again was repeatedly fouled. Portugal won 3-1 and Brazil exited with the sad sight of Pele limping around the Goodison field.
Goodison hosted an epic quarterfinal — North Korea took an early three-goal lead before Eusebio scored four and Portugal won 5-3 — then a semifinal that controversially didn't involve England. FIFA, led by its English president Stanley Rous, switched the England-Portugal game to Wembley and Goodison instead hosted West Germany beating the Soviet Union. Fans in Liverpool were not impressed, calling it an "England fix."
Goodison was "the best stadium in my playing life," Eusebio said in 2009 on a return visit.
Goodison's greatest games
For many Everton fans, nothing quite tops the atmosphere that was generated in the stadium — often fondly referred to as the "Grand Old Lady" — when their team beat Bayern Munich and Lothar Matthäus 3-1 in the second leg of the European Cup-Winners' Cup semifinals.
The old stadium rocked with relief as much as joy when Everton came from two goals down to beat Wimbledon 3-2 on the final day of the 1993-94 season to stay in the Premier League, and again four years later after a final-round 1-1 draw with Coventry to stay up on goal difference.
A 16-year-old Wayne Rooney announced himself to the world when coming off the bench to score with a last-minute, long-range curler in off the bar to end Arsenal's 30-game unbeaten league run in October 2002.
And there was the final men's Merseyside derby at Goodison in February. James Tarkowski smashed a shot into the roof of the net in the eighth minute of stoppage time to secure Everton a 2-2 draw with Liverpool.
What's next?
Everton is moving to Bramley-Moore Dock on Liverpool's waterfront to start next season. The new stadium already staged test events, is slated to host a high-profile rugby league match between England and Australia on Nov. 1, and is a host venue for the men's European Championship in 2028.
The plan was for Goodison Park to be demolished but Everton's new owners — the Friedkin family from Texas — announced this week that the women's team, which plays in the top-flight Super League, will play there from next season, moving from its nearby current home in Walton Hall Park. Goodison's current capacity of nearly 40,000 will likely be reduced.
Which classic stadiums are left in the English men's game?
There aren't many around, with most clubs moving — often with a heavy heart — for financial reasons to bigger and more modern arenas.
The demise of Goodison will soon be followed by Manchester United building a new 100,000-seat stadium next to its Old Trafford home.
Over the last three decades, the likes of Manchester City (2003), Arsenal (2006), West Ham (2016) and Tottenham (2019) have moved into new grounds, while Wembley — the home of English soccer — was rebuilt and reopened in 2007.
Among the classic stadiums hanging on in there are Anfield, Villa Park (Aston Villa's home since 1897), St. James' Park (Newcastle, 1892), the City Ground (Nottingham Forest, 1898), Craven Cottage (Fulham, 1896), Hillsborough (Sheffield Wednesday, 1899) and Molineux (Wolves, 1889).
