Liverpool (ING)

Liverpool Football Club (English pronunciation: /ˈlɪvərpul ˈfʊtbɔl klʌb/) is a professional English football club based in Liverpool, England, which plays in the Premier League, the top football competition in that country. It was officially registered as a football club by John Houlding on 6 June 1892, although it was originally named "Everton F. C. and Athletic Grounds Ltd." before the English Football Association. In 1893 it joined the Football League.

It is the institution with the highest number of championships in all kinds of official competitions among English football clubs, with a total of sixty-eight official titles. It is also the English club with the highest number of international titles, with one FIFA Club World Cup, six European Cups, three UEFA Cups and four UEFA Super Cups. At national level, it has won nineteen league titles, eight FA Cups, ten League Cups —being the team that has won that competition the most— sixteen Community Shields and one League Super Cup.

Although it won its first league title in 1901, it was during the 1970s and 1980s that the institution, under the management first of Bill Shankly and later of Bob Paisley, won seven international titles and eleven league championships. It was a founding member of the "Premier League" in 1992 and of the G-14 group. Its distinctive colours have historically been red —for which they are known as "The Reds"— and, to a lesser extent, white. It has played its home matches at Anfield since its formation, which has a capacity of 50,074 spectators.

It is considered one of the most popular clubs in England and in the world; it is also the ninth with the highest revenue as of 2014, with an annual income of €306 million. It was ranked by Forbes magazine as the eighth most valuable football club in the world in 2015, with a total value of $982 million. Its main rivalries are with Everton, against whom it plays the Merseyside derby, and with Manchester United Football Club, whose matches against each other are referred to as the North West derby.

Together with Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City, it is one of the only teams in the United Kingdom to have won the top club football championship in the world, when on 21 December 2019 it was crowned champion of the FIFA Club World Cup, held in Qatar, by defeating the representative of the Copa Libertadores de América, Flamengo of Brazil, 1–0 at the Khalifa International Stadium.

Two of the greatest tragedies in football involved its supporters. The first was the Heysel disaster in 1985, when 39 people —most of them Juventus supporters— died as a result of the incidents caused by English hooligans at the Heysel Stadium, and in 1989 in Sheffield, when 96 people perished as a result of poor organisation of the access to the stands at Hillsborough stadium. Its anthem is "You'll Never Walk Alone".