Chants of "Barça" went up and were met by a reply of "Liverpool". After a few minutes of trying to outshout the opposing supporters, people began to throw things at the rival section.
Just another sad tale of football hooliganism? Well, not quite. It was Catalans singing the Liverpool songs and Scousers chanting the name of the visiting side. The "missiles" were scarves. George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks were amazed and moved by the entire experience that night. When Liverpool move into their new stadium in 2009 (it was confirmed yesterday that work will begin on the Stanley Park site next month after Liverpool City Council gave the project the go-ahead), will the atmosphere still give visiting Americans goose pimples?
The focal point at Anfield is the Spion Kop. Hicks seems to recognise this. "What we're going to try to do is maintain as much of the tradition and unique history that Liverpool has, particularly the Kop," he said recently. "The Kop will be a key to the new stadium. The new stadium will be designed around it and it will be like the stage that performs to the rest of the stadium, and the rest of the stadium will participate with the Kop."
Getting this right will be crucial. Originally, a mound of earth behind the goal that backed on to Walton Breck Road and named after a Boer War battle, the Kop grew into the most iconic of terraces. There, football culture as we know it was born.
In the 1960s, television images of 26,000 swaying, chanting fans changed the way watching the game was perceived. "You got your education from the Kop," opposition supporters were told, and the songs and mores of Anfield were copied across the world. This was where football fanaticism showed its acceptable face, where Bill Shankly claimed the crowd "sucked the ball into the net", where the standards to be emulated by ends across the country were set.
The noise thrown down by the Kop has unnerved visiting sides down the years. Even now, it has semi-mythical status. Many people attribute the victory over Chelsea in the Champions League semi-finals two years ago to the intensity of the atmosphere at Anfield. This was Shankly's "bastion of invincibility" personified. The great worry for Liverpool supporters is that the Kop, and the fervour it generates, will be left behind at Anfield.
What diehard Kopites want is a steep, unbroken stand behind one goal. What they fear the architects will provide is a tiered stand that will be mirror image of the opposite end, with executive boxes and corporate seats to the fore. If this happens, it will be the Kop in name only.
Some would argue that the Kop is a metaphysical idea, merely being a manifestation of the intensity of purpose Liverpool fans bring to their support. To a certain extent this is true and, this year, a group of supporters, disappointed with the way Kopite traditions were being ignored, launched the Reclaim The Kop (RTK) campaign in an attempt to maintain the individual nature of the section.
RTK encourages supporters to learn and sing songs that are unique to Liverpool and discourages inane chants like "Who are yer" and mindless abuse of opposition players and fans. Harry Enfield-style "Scouser wigs" are not on the dress code.
The club have endorsed the campaign and the philosophical side of retaining the Kop's identity is in good hands. However, the right physical environment is vital to project this sense of history and culture. Gillett and Hicks should visit Dortmund's Westfalenstadion to see how a football ground should be built and brief their architects accordingly. The new owners have plenty of experience building stadiums in America but football works best in an environment where the passion is amplified and funnelled on to the pitch.
"What we want," Hicks says, "is the best football stadium in the world and be unique. When people see it, we want them to say: 'that's Liverpool'."
No. It should still be: This is Anfield. And for that to be true, there must be no compromises on the Kop.
—Tony Evans is Deputy Football Editor of The Times and author of Far Foreign Land: Pride and Passion the Liverpool Way
One of greatest names in the game inspired by bloody Boer War battle
— "As he lay on the battlefield dying, with the blood gushing out of his head, as he lay on the battlefield dying, dying, dying, these were the last words he said: "Oh, I am a Liverpudlian, and I come from the Spion Kop . . ."
— The battle of Spion Kop, which took place in 1900 during the Boer War, was a defeat for the British and the casualties — 87 officers and 1,647 men — were from the Lancashire Fusiliers and many had Liverpool connections.
— In Afrikaans, the term means "spy hill". It was given to the Anfield terrace by a local newspaper
— Woolwich Arsenal are believed to be the first team to call a terrace by the name
— In 1928, when a roof was added, the Anfield Kop was the largest covered terrace in Europe, with claims that it could hold 37,000 people
— Seats were put in the Kop in 1994
— The battle in the Liverpool song quoted above was not in the Boer War because the "Scouser Tommy" of the epic Kop anthem was "shot by an old Nazi gun"