The billionaire - and the bills Everton's race to build a new home

When Everton Football Club kicked off its latest project to build a new stadium, its owner, Farhad Moshiri, promised supporters he would do whatever it took to get it built

- Simon Goodley

“I’ll throw as much money as needed,” the businessman told the club’s annual meeting in 2019 . “It is no luxury; we have to get it done. If we want to have a big club we need a modern stadium and we will get it.”

The £500m project represented the club’s latest effort to leave its famous, if creaking, Good is on Park home – where one of the original 12 founding members of the Football League first played in 1892.

Previous attempts to move, dating back to the 1990s, had been aborted. But, as Moshiri addressed supporters and shareholders, Everton fans felt reassured they now had an owner whom the Sunday Times Rich List assessed as being a billionaire – plus the backing of a city council promising a £280m loan to help fund the project . Many must have also believed that their once glorious club, which last lifted a men’s trophy by winning the FA Cup in 1995, was finally on the brink of a new dawn.

But now – with Moshiri reportedly in talks to sell a stake in the club and problems mounting at Good is on Park – some fans are debating if that new dawn might turn into a false one.

The chosen new site at Bramley Moore Dock – the northernmost point of the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City – was cited by Unesco as one reason for stripping the city’s historic trading zone of its world heritage site status last year.

Then, an agreed £30m naming rights option for the stadium with Moshiri’s long-term business partner, Alisher Usmanov , was cancelled – after the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine .