Word: liverpool
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...everyone's reveling in the good times. "Clubs are sitting in a pet shop window with a 'for sale sign'," laments Rogan Taylor, a Liverpool fan for almost half a century and the director of the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool. "[They] are not just businesses but much more important cultural and social assets for individual places ... This isn't the way these grand institutions should be traded." But with Liverpool among the Premier League's foreign-owned teams - Tom Hicks, owner of baseball's Texas Rangers, and George Gillett, owner of the Montreal Canadians hockey franchise...
...into half measures, either. Taylor, a founder of England's Football Supporters' Association in the mid-80s, is calling on 100,000 Liverpool fans anywhere to each chip in $10,000 toward the cost of buying back the club and footing the bill for a new stadium. In return, individual fans - limited to a single share in the business - would each vote to elect executives to run the club. It's a model of ownership popular on the continent: Spanish soccer giants Barcelona are among several top-flight teams in the country to be owned by its fans...
...while the level of fans' financial interest isn't yet clear, their unrest is palpable. "We have been in this business for years," Hicks told TIME shortly after buying Liverpool last year. "All team owners go through a learning curve at how to be a good owner. We both have done that ... fans want stability. Players want stability." In truth, it hasn't really worked out like that. A public spat with Rafael Benitez, Liverpool's Spanish team manager and a favorite among supporters, has done nothing for the American owners' own fan base in the city. Uncertainty over...
...while the club has lost its focus since Keegan ended a successful first spell as team manager in the mid-'90s, the fans haven't. Rival northern English cities like Liverpool and Manchester host two top-flight football teams. London boasts five. For Geordies, though, it's Newcastle or nothing. And "when they've worked all week, the match for them is like it is for people down south going to the theater," Keegan said before this weekend's game, his first back in charge at St James' Park. "They want to see something special...
Like each of his ex-Fab Four bandmates, the former drummer for the Beatles has become an accomplished solo artist. His new album, Liverpool 8, comes out on Jan. 15. Ringo Starr will now take your questions...