Liverpool fans celebrate Champions League win at Las Vegas pub

According to the song it adopted as its official anthem in 1963, supporters of the Liverpool soccer team will never walk alone.

If Saturday’s Champions League Final viewing party at McMullan’s Irish Pub is any indication, they’ll never drink alone, either.

The prestigious European club championship, won 2-0 by Liverpool of England over domestic rival Tottenham Hotspur, happened to coincide with KOPCON 2019, the first U.S. convention for Reds’ fans. Rest assured the local distributors of Carlsberg beer — one of Liverpool FC’s longtime sponsors — in green pint-sized bottles were not upset by the timing.

“We’re coming back to Las Vegas next year,” said Alex Malone, a Liverpool native now making his home in Yorba Linda, California, and a KOPCON organizer. “It’s been such a success. Every event we’ve had has exceeded expectations.”

The convention is named for the Kop, a terraced grandstand at Anfield, Liverpool’s venerable home ground. Before that, Spion Kop was the ancient battleground in South Africa upon which British troops fought during the Second Boer War.

More than 200 attended the convention at the Westgate that included a pub night, pool party and legends night honoring former Liverpool stalwarts Roy Evans, Howard Gayle and David Johnson. Musicians also made the trip from Merseyside and performed for free.

Stunning turnout

Evans, who played for and then managed Liverpool during the 1990s and was a teammate of former UNLV soccer coach Barry Barto with the North American Soccer League’s Philadelphia Atoms, was stunned by the turnout.

“I never really imagined we’d be in the likes of Las Vegas and have so many supporters,” he said.

Added the Liverpool-born Gayle, who in 1977 became the side’s first black player: “Liverpool has a huge global following, but this is absolutely brilliant here. Liverpool fans from all over the states have been flying in to be part of this event.”

And not just from the states.

A Liverpool supporter named Linda Welsh said she flew in from Belfast. And before the first corner kick, Reds fans from Finland and Ireland and a bevy of transplanted Liverpudlians living in American cities far and wide sidled up to chat.

Paul Gifford, who now makes his home in Brandon, Mississippi, showed an old Polaroid of his mom and dad with a mustachioed Ringo Starr and his parents. It was taken in 1968 at the Railway Club, a former social club in Liverpool’s gritty inner city known as The Dingle.

“Ringo and I went to the same school (St Silas C) at different times,” Gifford said after Liverpool’s Mo Salah scored on a penalty kick in the game’s second minute and, no slight to the Beatles’ legendary drummer, became the new hero of Gifford and the other red-clad Liverpool supporters who had elbowed their way into the pub.

They were a long way from home, but they weren’t walking alone.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.