The Liverpool Boot Room was a room at Anfield, home of Liverpool F.C., during the 1960s - early 1990s where the coaching staff would sit, drink whisky and discuss the team, tactics and ways of defeating the next opposing side.[1]
In January 2011 after taking the reins of Liverpool for the second time as manager, Kenny Dalglish announced his intent to bring the Boot Room back.[2]
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It was actually a room that stored the squad's football boots that Bill Shankly also changed into a coaches' meeting room. It was an informal and a relaxing atmosphere that paid dividends for Liverpool who were rebuilding at the time. The original members of the boot room staff were Shankly, Reuben Bennett, Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan. Bennett was the only one of the original quartet who did not manage the club at some point during his career. It was, though, Bennett who remained at Anfield the longest of the four.[3]
Paisley knew Liverpool traditions, having been a player, becoming a physiotherapist and then a coach. He also knew what the Liverpool faithful expected from their side. Fagan was quiet but very astute and a favourite of Shankly's, who tried in vain to sign him as a player whilst he was the manager of Grimsby Town. Reuben Bennett was a friend of Shankly's as well as a work colleague, he knew the man and his family and used to be a decent player in his own right. After Shankly left in 1974, the boot room tradition was carried on by succeeding managers Paisley, Fagan and Kenny Dalglish during the most illustrious era of the club's history.
The Boot Room was also used for the training of future Liverpool managers (graduates). It became 'the Liverpool way' to promote from within so that the wheels would carry on turning smoothly in the event of a manager resigning or, as it used to be at Anfield, retiring. Paisley, Fagan and Ronnie Moran, who stepped in as caretaker manager on several occasions, were all trained, without them realising it, in the Boot Room.
Although managers Dalglish and Graeme Souness were not "educated" in the Boot Room, they realised the values that it brought and kept it during their tenures. It produced yet another manager in Roy Evans when Souness left the club. Evans took over at the helm after a long education that began under Shankly, and although the club did not win half as much under Souness and Evans, they kept the Boot Room running producing coaches like Sammy Lee and aiding established coaches such as Doug Livermore.
With the advent of the "modern" game Gérard Houllier closed the door on the Boot Room for the final time but kept up the tradition of bringing in Liverpool people, by hiring former Red's skipper and coach Phil Thompson who also took over the running of the club when Houllier had to enter hospital to have an operation on his heart.
Former manager in charge Rafael Benítez also knows about the value of the Boot Room, and although he did not establish a room of his own, he reintroduced a lot of the values and ideas, albeit with a more modern approach. The Boot Room legacy has been resurrected again with the appointment of old boy and former coach Sammy Lee as assistant manager in May 2008, who played under Bob Paisley in the glory days of the 1980s.
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