Its opening few notes and lyrics are enough to send some of football’s biggest and most impassioned amphitheatres into throaty chorus. You’ll Never Walk Alone is sung by countless clubs around the world, but even when performed by a congregation of thousands at Anfield or Celtic Park or the Westfallenstadion, it is an anthem that means something different to so many.
But what makes You’ll Never Walk Alone football’s definitive anthem? How did a song originally written by Rodgers and Hammerstein in the 1940s for the Broadway musicalCarousel become a terrace staple at some of the world’s biggest clubs – Celtic, Liverpool, Borussia Dortmund, Club Brugge, Feyenoord, FC Twente, Hoffenheim, Mainz 05, Kaiserslautern, Borussia Monchengladbach and even FC Tokyo just to name a few.
Graham Ruthven 