Goodison Park legacy guide

133 years at Goodison Park

Goodison Park was Everton’s home from 1892 until the club’s move to the Hill Dickinson Stadium for the 2025-26 season — 133 years of continuous use, making it one of the longest-serving grounds in English football history until its closure. It was also a genuine pioneer among British stadiums: the first purpose-built English football ground of real scale, one of the earliest to have a stand on all four sides, and a host venue for the 1966 World Cup, staging five matches including a semi-final. For a club now settling into a brand-new stadium, that history matters to understanding what Everton is and where it came from — see our Everton Hill Dickinson Stadium guide for the current-day picture, and this guide for the history that preceded it.

Why the move happened

Goodison’s fixed footprint, hemmed in on all sides by residential streets in a way that had no room for expansion, became an increasingly serious constraint as modern stadium economics rewarded larger capacity and better matchday revenue infrastructure. At roughly 39,000, it was comfortably smaller than Anfield and well below the capacity of stadiums built or substantially redeveloped in the same period across the Premier League. Ageing facilities — narrower concourses, restricted-view seating in some older stands, and limited scope for modern hospitality and accessibility provision — added to the case for a genuinely new build rather than another incremental renovation. The Hill Dickinson Stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, opened for 2025-26, was the eventual answer, discussed in full in our Anfield vs Hill Dickinson comparison.

The final match and what it meant locally

Everton’s last competitive match at Goodison Park closed out the 2024-25 season, drawing intense local emotion given how many generations of Evertonians had supported the club from the same stands. For a ground this old, closure wasn’t just an operational change — it marked the end of a shared physical landmark that had anchored matchday routines, pub culture, and family traditions in the surrounding streets for well over a century. Local reporting and fan accounts around the closure emphasised this sense of loss even among supporters broadly supportive of the move to a modern stadium.

What’s happening to the site

Redevelopment plans for the Goodison Park site center on the “Goodison Legacy” project, aimed at repurposing the historic ground for community and sports use rather than demolishing it outright or leaving it derelict. The specifics of what facilities end up on-site, and the pace of that redevelopment, were still taking shape as Everton settled into the new stadium — this is a multi-year process rather than an immediate conversion, so visitors expecting a finished new attraction on the old site in the near term should check current status before planning a special trip around it.

Can you still visit Goodison Park?

Access to the old stadium site has been more limited since closure than it was during Everton’s tenure there, given the ground is no longer operating as a matchday venue with regular public access. Depending on the stage of the Goodison Legacy redevelopment at the time of your visit, some heritage or community elements of the site may be accessible, but this isn’t a straightforward “buy a ticket, tour the old ground” situation in the way Anfield’s stadium tour operates. Check current access status before making a special trip, since the situation is evolving as redevelopment progresses.

Everton’s history beyond the stadium move

Everton is, in some respects, the senior partner in Liverpool’s football story — founded in 1878, fourteen years before Liverpool FC came into existence following a rent dispute that split the original Everton committee, with the breakaway group founding Liverpool FC at Anfield (the ground Everton itself had played at before the split). That shared origin story is central to understanding the Merseyside derby’s particular intensity, covered in full in our Merseyside derby guide. Everton went on to considerable success through the mid-20th century, including multiple League titles won at Goodison Park, giving the old ground a trophy history that long predates the newer, more Anfield-dominated era of Merseyside football success in recent decades.

The World Cup connection

Goodison Park’s role in the 1966 World Cup — hosting five matches, more than any other venue outside Wembley — is a specific point of pride that features in most serious histories of the ground. It reflects Goodison’s status, at the time, as one of the country’s most modern and best-regarded stadiums, a status that had eroded by the 2020s as newer builds elsewhere in the Premier League moved capacity and facilities well beyond what Goodison’s constrained footprint could match.

Visiting the new stadium instead

For visitors specifically interested in Everton’s history, the Hill Dickinson Stadium’s own displays and tour commentary incorporate the club’s Goodison-era story even though the physical ground itself sits elsewhere — the Hill Dickinson Stadium match and tour options are the practical way to engage with Everton’s history and current team in person now that Goodison itself is no longer an operating matchday venue. The Liverpool football stadiums e-bike tour specifically routes past the former Goodison Park site as part of a wider loop connecting it with Anfield and the new stadium, giving useful visual and historical context even without a dedicated Goodison tour product.

Why this history matters for visitors

Understanding Goodison’s place in Everton’s story — and in English football more broadly — adds real depth to a visit to the new stadium, since much of the club’s identity, chants, and fan culture were shaped over more than a century at the old ground rather than starting fresh with the move. Treating the Hill Dickinson Stadium as a completely blank slate misses that continuity; the new building houses a genuinely old club with a specific, well-documented history that long predates its current home.

Famous moments the old ground witnessed

Beyond the 1966 World Cup, Goodison Park hosted decades of significant domestic football, including League title wins through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and a genuinely golden mid-1980s era under manager Howard Kendall that produced a League title, an FA Cup and the club’s sole European trophy, the 1985 European Cup Winners’ Cup. It also hosted numerous England internationals during periods when Wembley wasn’t the automatic default venue, and several dramatic Merseyside derby matches whose stories are retold in fan folklore well beyond Everton’s own supporter base. Any serious history of English football in the 20th century has to reckon with Goodison Park as one of its genuine landmark venues, not a footnote.

The surrounding neighbourhood

Goodison Park sat in Walton, a residential area of Liverpool distinct from Anfield despite the two grounds being separated only by Stanley Park. The area’s identity was closely tied to the stadium for well over a century, and the closure has real implications for local businesses — pubs, chip shops, and matchday-dependent trade — that built their operations around Everton’s presence. The Goodison Legacy project’s community-facing ambitions are partly a response to this, aiming to preserve some economic and social function for the neighbourhood even without regular Premier League matchdays anchoring footfall the way they did for 133 years.

Comparing Goodison’s closure to other historic ground closures

Goodison Park’s situation echoes other historic English football ground closures and relocations — Arsenal’s move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium in 2006 is probably the closest comparable case in Premier League history, another instance of a club leaving a beloved, constrained, century-old ground for a larger purpose-built stadium nearby. Highbury’s old pitch and stands were redeveloped into residential apartments rather than a sports or community facility, a different outcome from what’s currently planned for Goodison Park under the Legacy project, and worth noting as one possible reference point for how these transitions can play out, even though Everton’s specific plans differ in emphasis.

Checking current status before visiting

Because the Goodison Legacy project is an evolving, multi-year redevelopment rather than a completed attraction, specifics change over time — what’s accessible, what’s under construction, and what final form the site takes will all shift as the project progresses. If visiting the old ground’s site specifically is important to your trip, check the most current status through official Everton or Liverpool City Council channels close to your travel dates rather than relying on information that may be a season or more out of date by the time you visit.

Memorabilia and where the old ground’s artefacts went

As with most major stadium transitions, elements of the old ground — seats, signage, sections of turf, and various fixtures — were made available to fans through official club sales around the closure, a common practice that lets long-time supporters own a tangible piece of the old stadium’s history. If collecting genuine Goodison Park memorabilia interests you, official club channels are the safest route to verify authenticity, given the inevitable market for unofficial or misrepresented “Goodison” items that spring up whenever a historic ground closes.

How Goodison Park compares to Anfield’s ongoing story

It’s worth setting Goodison’s closure against Anfield’s continued evolution for context. Where Everton chose a clean break — an entirely new stadium on a new site — Liverpool FC has instead expanded and redeveloped Anfield incrementally over decades, most recently with the 2016 Main Stand expansion and the 2023-2025 Anfield Road End rebuild, while keeping the same physical ground its history was built on. Both are valid strategic paths for a historic football club balancing heritage against modern stadium economics, and comparing the two approaches — one continuous evolution, one clean break — is a genuinely interesting lens for understanding how English football’s oldest clubs are managing their physical homes in the 2020s. Our Anfield vs Hill Dickinson comparison picks this comparison up in more direct, visitor-facing detail.

A living history rather than a closed chapter

Though the ground itself no longer hosts Everton matches, Goodison Park’s story isn’t finished — the Legacy redevelopment, whatever final shape it takes, ensures the site remains part of the city’s fabric rather than becoming a demolished blank space. For visitors with a genuine interest in football history, keeping an eye on how this redevelopment unfolds over the coming years is a worthwhile ongoing story, distinct from but connected to the more immediate, bookable experiences now centred on the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Notable managers and players associated with Goodison

Beyond Howard Kendall’s 1980s success, Goodison Park’s long history includes spells under managers like Harry Catterick, whose 1960s teams won the League title twice, and a roll call of players whose names remain part of Everton’s identity even decades later — Dixie Dean, whose 60-goal 1927-28 season record still stands as an English top-flight benchmark, and more recent figures who became synonymous with the club’s Goodison-era identity. This depth of individual history is part of what the Goodison Legacy project aims to preserve and communicate, even without regular matchday football continuing at the site itself.

What visitors specifically interested in football heritage should do

For heritage-focused visitors rather than current-team fans, a realistic plan is to check the current status of any accessible Goodison Legacy elements before travelling, combine that with a visit to the Hill Dickinson Stadium (whose own tour and museum content incorporates Goodison-era history, even physically located elsewhere), and treat both as complementary rather than substitutable experiences. Together, they give a genuinely fuller picture of Everton’s story than either alone — the old ground’s accumulated history plus the new ground’s current-day reality.