Football - Liverpool FC: John Toshack: Bill Shankly gave Liverpool FC a mystique

Dec 1 2009 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

Football - Liverpool FC: JOHN TOSHACK believes the values which created Bill Shankly’s legend 50 years ago will be just as important in 50 years time.

He said: “I suppose he invented Liverpool as the club they are now. You only have to go there now and you see the foundations he laid down 50 years ago are still evident.

“Shanks used to say, and it is poignant now because it is 50 years since he was appointed, that ‘the most important things in football were important 50 years ago and they will be important 50 years from now’.

“Shankly is the most important thing in the history of Liverpool and he will still be important 50 years from now.

“Everything he did, the style, the system, the way Liverpool played, is still in place. Still as relevant now as it was all those years ago.

“He gave Liverpool that mystique, that aura of greatness.”

Toshack added: “His beliefs carried on through Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans. That was the testimony to what he built there. Liverpool then was nothing like it is now. He put everything together. From training ground to the stadium.

“I speak for not only myself, but for people like Emlyn Hughes and all the rest of the lads he took from lower division clubs and gave them the chance of playing for Liverpool.

“You see the money being paid for players now, it’s amazing. But he created a great team with very little outlay by comparison.”