Moshiri hopes stadium he delivered can be a catalyst for new era of success at Everton

Everton’s former majority shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, has made some rare public comments on his time at the Club and his hopes for the future, having played a massive part in delivering the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock.

The Blues play their last fixture at Goodison Park this weekend before moving to their new 52,888-seat arena for the start of the 2025/26 season in August, with Moshiri’s regime having realised a dream that began in the mid-1990s under then-Chairman, Peter Johnson.

Johnson’s plans to move the Club beyond the city limits fell by the wayside as his tenure as Everton’s owner and benefactor collapsed while his successor, Bill Kenwright, and various backers in the first decade of the 2000s failed with two proposals to build a new ground, first at the Kings Dock and then in neighbouring Kirkby.

Thanks to Moshiri pumping a large proportion of his net worth into funding the construction of the stadium on Liverpool's derelict north docks, the search for a resolution to the stadium question — how Everton could progress in a new era of billionaires and state-ownership of Premier League clubs without either redeveloping or moving stadia — is over. 

Moshiri’s time at Everton was plagued by financial mis-management, massive expenditure on players and ever-worsening performance on the pitch before he sold his 94.1% stake to The Friedkin Group last December.

However, the British-Iranian businessman hopes that his success in delivering the £880m Everton Stadium will provide the Club the platform from which to build towards the success he wasn’t able to achieve.

“We were all in love with Goodison; I was in love with Goodison,” Moshiri said in an interview with Sky Sports. “Nobody wanted to move but the reason we had to leave was partly infrastructural, partly financial.

“20 years before us, they had tried [to move] so somebody had to launch themselves into it and we did that. I had to put in £400 million. The rest had to come from other investors.”

“The fact that we have The Friedkin Group [in charge] as really good custodians in a new stadium – I think this is our best chance to bridge the gap.

“Our fans have suffered far too long. This is our chance, our platform to overcome years of frustration and I’m just hoping that I could have been a catalyst for this.

“That’s the main thing for me.”