You’d think that by now, after all these years, Kelvin MacKenzie would’ve learned his lesson when it comes to Liverpool.
The 70-year-old former editor of The Sun newspaper is detested in the city after the paper’s coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, in which 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives.
At the time, the paper had made claims – claims that were proved to be false – that drunken Liverpool fans were responsible for the crush, and even went as far as saying that some supporters stole items from those who had died.
On Friday, the day before the 28th anniversary of the tragedy, an article written by MacKenzie on Everton’s Liverpool-born Ross Barkley has sparked further outrage, largely for the paragraph below:
‘The reality is that at £60,000 a week and being both thick and single, he is an attractive catch in the Liverpool area, where the only men with similar pay packets are drug dealers and therefore not at nightclubs, as they are often guests of Her Majesty.’
As you might expect, there’s been an enormous response to the article, with Liverpool’s mayor, Joe Anderson, calling on Everton to ban representatives of The Sun from club press conferences.
Gary Lineker, himself a former Everton player, has also responded to it. A tweet from the Match of the Day host makes perfectly clear what he thinks of MacKenzie, a sentiment that will be echoed by many on Merseyside and beyond.
