Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Everton

Nickname: The Toffeemen

Ground: Goodison Park

Stadium Capacity: 40,221

Song: Theme From Z-Cars

Suppose the modern TV cop show gets curious about where it came from and searches for its ancestors. In that case, it will discover that every classic police show, here and in America – The Sweeney, The Bill, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, even Brooklyn 99 – has one ancestor in common: Z Cars, a classic British police drama.

Z Cars was one of the first ‘real life’ police dramas on British television when it launched in 1962. It was broadcast live, even though most shows were pre-recorded. The live setting gave it an immediacy that other police dramas lacked, while the plots tried to present a more realistic portrayal of life on the street than the idealised stories the public had been used to seeing.

When American TV producer, Steven Bocho, developed the then ground-breaking Hill Street Blues in 1981, it was Z Cars that inspired him:

“I wanted my writers to watch Z Cars, and I wanted them to get that idea of overlapping dialogue, to get the home life in there. The BBC had already done it, and I wanted to emulate it.” 

One of the critical differences between Z Cars and other shows of that time was that it was set in a fictional northern town – Newtown – rather than in London. This move to the regions was seen as a radical step, and another break from the plummy accents and pinstriped suits image the BBC portrayed in the 1950s.

The show was filmed near Liverpool, and during a break from filming, the cast arranged a trip to watch Everton in action. When the club found out that the actors would be there, they arranged for the team to walk out to the Z-Cars theme, which was based on music from an old Liverpool folksong called ‘Johnny Todd’.

The fans loved the new song and requested the club to keep playing it. Except for one season when an attempt to replace it with more modern music was rejected by the fans, it has been played ever since.

It seems appropriate that a song associated with such an influential show should be played by Everton because, in its way, Everton has influenced others across the globe too. An influence that means you’ll never hear a chant of “there’s only one Everton” at Goodison Park. Nor at the Estadio Sausalito, the home stadium of a Chilean football club, Everton de Viña del Mar. There isn’t just one Everton; there are four current teams called Everton (and one other that has long since disbanded).

The most well know of the other Evertons is Everton de Viña del Mar. It was founded in 1909 by a group of English ex-pats who named it Everton in honour of the English side, which was, at that time, touring Argentina along with Tottenham Hotspur. De Viña del Mar was only added in the 1950s.

Although football was already popular in Argentina, Everton and Spurs travelled to South America to encourage enthusiasm for the fledgling game and share their superior tactics and skill with Argentina. It must have worked too, much to England’s regret in the 1986 and 1998 World Cups.

Today, the two clubs have strong links fostered by the Ruleteros Society, a dedicated supporters club, who, in June 2011, helped unveil a marble plaque at Goodison Park commemorating players who had fought and died in both world wars. Among the fallen players it honours were Frank Boundy and Malcolm Fraser – founder members of the Chilean Everton, who had sailed home to volunteer. They died at the Somme. An identical plaque can be found at Estadio Sausalito.

The clubs have only met once, and that was on 4 August 2010 in a specially arranged friendly in Liverpool to play for the Brotherhood Cup. The English Everton won 2 – 0.

Much like Z Cars, Everton has, from its Mersey home, quietly influenced teams across the world.