My love affair with football started when I was very young. One of my first memories is of chasing my dad through the back garden as he danced around me with the ball at his feet. I even remember the fact that the ball was a dark shade of blue with white, curving lines that centred around the valve. 

Football very quickly became an obsession. It was not only playing that I enjoyed though, it was supporting too. Alike to many fans, I had no choice about which team I supported, from the minute of my birth I was a Liverpool fan. Being a Liverpool fan hasn’t treated me too badly, some of my best memories have been Liverpool related, one of my most sacred came as we won the league last season. At the time, I was in Prague and vividly remember my voice wavering and tears rolling down my cheeks as I called my dad, repeating the phrase ‘we’ve finally done it’, like a madman. 

That being said, there have also been some darker moments, tears rolled down my cheeks in a more painful manner after both Champions League final losses that I have witnessed.

It could even be said that my first heartbreak was watching Sevilla beat us in the Europa League final after a superb Daniel Sturridge trivela put us one nil up. No matter what though, my support for the club has never wavered.

One of the things that I love most about Liverpool is their ties to left-wing politics and their consistent championing of morals. Once, when asked which political leader I admired the most I puffed out my chest and with great pride uttered the name of one of the founding heroes of my club, Bill Shankly – football is like socialism after all.

So, it was a pretty grim day when one of my close friends sent me a post telling me that of all the English clubs, Liverpool was the most complicit in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

I found myself conflicted, what was I to do? Could I continue to support a club that felt profit was more important than the lives of millions of innocent Palestinians? I’m not sure I could. But is it the Liverpool that I support that is doing this?

I certainly don’t support Liverpool’s ownership, I don’t support football as an industry, never in a million years should Mohamed Salah be on 350,000 pounds a week. I don’t care how good his left foot is, and my god is it a wand of a left foot, capable of pure footballing magic, but it’s not worth 350,000 pounds a week. 

What I do support and believe in is the 61,000 fans that shout, chant, and sing for ninety minutes every weekend. I support the eleven lads that step foot on the pitch, no matter their ethnicity, ability, haircut or the amount of money that they are being paid. All that matters is that they are wearing Liverpool red.

I concluded that I can still support the same Liverpool that I always have, I just have to now double down on the vocality of my criticisms for the ownership and the money behind the club. 

I don’t support capitalism, and realistically, that is the core of this problem. 

It is the capitalist system which allows Mohamed Salah to be paid 350,000 pounds a week and for the Fenway Group to think it is acceptable to partner themselves with groups that consider profit more important than the lives of millions.

It is also the capitalist system that facilitates the genocide itself. It is not me and my love of Liverpool that are the problem here. I will not abandon Liverpool; I will not stop supporting them.

Equally, I will also not stop voicing my discontent with capitalism, genocide, and the billionaire class that think themselves gods. 

Until we find ourselves in a socialist world, we must learn to function and live within a capitalist one. It is a hard truth, but it is truth, nonetheless. That is what I am doing when I put on my scarf and go ballistic for a Dominik Szoboszlai free kick.

There is also a responsibility for all football fans like me, that feel disenfranchised with our clubs and the world we operate in, to speak out not only when our own club is in the wrong. 

It wouldn’t be right to talk on the topics of Palestine and football, without mentioning the Arsenal kitman, Mark Bonnick, and former Mainz and Aston Villa winger, Anwar El-Ghazi. Both these brave men have had their lives irreparably altered by taking stances on the genocide and speaking out for those without a voice. 

Bonnick was fired after tweeting about a free Palestine, and El-Ghazi had his contract terminated in Germany. 

Not only is this a blatant free-speech issue, but also symptomatic of the football industry as a whole. We are constantly told to keep politics out of football and stick to sport, unsurprising really, when upon closer inspection a vast amount of premier league football club owners are immoral billionaires who are happy to launder money through our teams.

That is not to take away from the complicity of my own club, Liverpool. I am merely suggesting that just because you are not top of a list, does not mean you are not involved. 

Perhaps a unified force may be able to achieve divestment, however the greed within football has never been so rampant. Just look at Infantino awarding Trump a peace prize, or the fact that numerous clubs in the Premier League are funded by the Saudi state. 

There should still be some hope though, only a couple of weeks ago, an Anfield crowd came together to protest price rises and at the very least have managed to delay them a couple of years. Such displays of solidarities are reminders of the importance of collective action, and for me personally, the left-wing Liverpool that I support. 

I will end on a sentiment that I think to be of the utmost importance. There is no keeping politics out of anything, unfortunately everything is political. As such, pretending to be able to keep it out of the things we love in the name of plausible deniability and a guilt free world is naïve and irresponsible.