Neil Atkinson (born 21 January 1981) is a Liverpool-based writer, broadcaster and film producer. [1] [2] He is the host, [3] Content Manager, [4] and one of the main writers and business developers [5] behind online football and culture magazine The Anfield Wrap [6] which has had more than 28 million podcast downloads worldwide. Atkinson has presented sell-out shows of The Anfield Wrap in London, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Ireland and Scandinavia, as well as on stage at the Sound City Festival in Liverpool. [7] [8] [9] [10] Atkinson co-wrote and co-produced [11] the film Native , which had a theatrical release in the UK in 2018 and won the feature film award at the 2016 Boston science fiction festival. [12] Described as "smart" and "elegant" by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian . [13] Kim Newman in Empire magazine described it as "ambitious, unusual and thought-provoking". [14] In The Times , Ed Potton wrote that it was a "script full of promise, with provocative things to say about empathy, obedience and individualism". [15]
Atkinson is a regular Radio City Talk presenter and won the Football Supporters Federation 2016 national radio show award. [16] He runs his own Liverpool-based production company, Film1st, and hosts music podcast The Rider. [17] Atkinson has guested as a punter on The Totally Football Show discussing Liverpool Football Club's 2019–20 Premier League title triumph, [18] and Liverpool's 5–0 win at Old Trafford over Manchester United on 24 October 2021. [19]
Formerly a chairman for Spirit of Shankly, [20] he has contributed to New Statesman discussing the social impact of tragedies [21] [22] and has appeared on BBC Breakfast, Football Focus, BBC Radio 5 Live , BT Sport and Sky Sports , during which former Manchester United defender Gary Neville described Atkinson as "a better pundit than me". [23]
He co-wrote the 2014 book Make Us Dream with John Gibbons about the 2013–14 Liverpool F.C. season [24] as well as Numero 6 in 2019, about Liverpool’s 2018–19 season culminating in their 2019 UEFA Champions League Final victory, their sixth European Cup triumph. [25] In August 2019 with Michael MacCambridge Atkinson began Red Letters, a weekly correspondence about the Liverpool Football Club for the Liverpool Echo’s American website, which is being edited into a book. [26] Atkinson has also written for newspapers such as newspapers such as The Guardian , The Independent the Liverpool Echo on Liverpool FC related topics.[ citation needed ]
Liverpool Football Club is a professional football club based in Liverpool, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1892, the club joined the Football League the following year and has played its home games at Anfield since its formation.
The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal crowd crush at a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the two standing-only central pens within the Leppings Lane stand allocated to Liverpool supporters. Shortly before kick-off, police match commander David Duckenfield ordered exit gate C to be opened in an attempt to ease crowding; this led to an influx of supporters entering the pens. This resulted in overcrowding of those pens and the crush, with 97 deaths and 766 injuries, which was the highest death toll in British sporting history. Ninety-four people died on the day; another person died in hospital days later, and another died in 1993. In July 2021, a coroner ruled that Andrew Devine, who died 32 years later, after suffering severe and irreversible brain damage on the day, was the 97th victim. The match was abandoned and restaged at Old Trafford in Manchester on 7 May 1989; Liverpool won and went on to win that season's FA Cup.
Anfield is a football stadium in Anfield, Liverpool, England, which has a seating capacity of 60,725 making it the fifth largest football stadium in England. It has been the home of Liverpool F.C. since their formation in 1892. It was originally the home of Everton from 1884 to 1891, before they moved to Goodison Park after a dispute with the club president.
Ronald Frederick Atkinson is an English former football player and manager. Nicknamed "Big Ron", he was regarded as one of Britain's best-known football pundits in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Farm are a British band from Liverpool. Their first album, Spartacus, reached the top position on the UK Albums Chart when it was released in March 1991; Spartacus 30 was released in 2021 to commemorate the anniversary. Spartacus includes two songs which had been top 10 singles the year before. In 2012, they toured with their Spartacus Live shows and formed part of the Justice Tonight Band, supporting the Stone Roses at Heaton Park, Phoenix Park, Lyon and Milan. The Justice Collective had the 2012 Christmas number one with their recording of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother".
Liverpool Football Club, commonly referred to as Liverpool or Liverpool Football Club Women if distinguishing themselves from the men's team, is a professional English women's football team based in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. They have served as the official women's division of Liverpool Football Club since 1994. Founded in 1989 as Newton LFC and subsequently renamed Knowsley United WFC, Liverpool Ladies and Liverpool FC Women over the years. The club was a founding member of the top-tier Women's Super League in 2011. A year later, Liverpool became the first English football club to offer every female player full-time professional contracts. This decision pioneered the professionalisation of women's football in England and led to Liverpool winning back to back Women's Super League titles in 2013 and 2014. In 2022, they also won the FA Women's Championship, earning promotion back to the Women's Super League, having done so three times previously in 2003–04, 2006–07, 2009–10.
The Liverpool F.C.–Manchester United F.C. rivalry, sometimes referred to as the Northwest Derby, is a high-profile inter-city rivalry between English professional football clubs Liverpool and Manchester United. It is considered one of the biggest fixtures in English football and one of the biggest and fiercest rivalries in world football. Players, fans and the media consider the fixture between the two clubs to be their biggest rivalry, above even their own local derbies, with Everton and Manchester City respectively.
Roberto Firmino Barbosa de Oliveira is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as a forward or attacking midfielder for Saudi Pro League club Al-Ahli, whom he captains.
Safe standing is a measure of design in stadia to ensure that spectators are able to stand safely during events. It is important in the context of association football in the United Kingdom, where a series of fatal incidents led to legislation requiring major clubs to develop all-seater stadiums during the 1990s. Since then, fan groups have campaigned against the ban on standing accommodation, arguing that new design options would allow designated standing areas to be built in compliance with all safety laws and guidelines. As these options are outlawed in England and Wales, safe standing in practice originated in continental Europe, primarily Germany. This occurred because although UEFA and FIFA required all-seater stadiums for international competition, it was not mandatory for domestic matches.
Native is a 2016 British sci-fi film directed by Daniel Fitzsimmons, written by Fitzsimmons and Neil Atkinson. It stars Rupert Graves and Ellie Kendrick.
The Anfield Wrap is a collective of podcasts, radio shows, videocasts, live shows, magazine and website articles predominantly about Liverpool F.C. as well as the culture and music in the city of Liverpool.
James Horncastle is an English sportswriter and a broadcaster. Specialising in European and Italian football, Horncastle frequently covers football for BT Sport.
Duncan Alexander is an association football statistician, broadcaster and author for The Athletic.
Daniel Storey is a British journalist and author. He is the Chief Football Writer at the i (newspaper).
Rory Smith is a journalist, broadcaster and author. He is the chief soccer correspondent of The New York Times, having taken up the role in 2016. Smith is a former journalist of The Times, The Independent, and The Daily Telegraph,
Jonathan Liew is a sports writer for The Guardian. Liew has been named the sports writer of the year, and sports columnist of the year, at the annual SJA Awards.
Ed Malyon is a British sports journalist who was most recently Managing Director of UK Operations for The Athletic. He was formerly the sports editor of The Independent and the weekend football editor of the Daily Mirror.
Fans Supporting Foodbanks is a joint initiative between rival Liverpool F.C. and Everton F.C. supporters, founded in 2015 to tackle food poverty in Liverpool. It provides a quarter of all food donations to north Liverpool food banks and has helped to develop a network of fan-driven food banks across the UK. It is an example of progressive football fan activism.
Adam Rowe is an English stand-up comedian and podcaster from Liverpool.
Melissa Reddy is a South African football journalist and author. Reddy left her role as the Senior Football Correspondent at The Independent in March 2022, to become a senior reporter for Sky Sports and Sky Sports News. Her speciality is the Premier League.