Fenway Sports Group are facing scrutiny back in the United States over another controversial MLB trade, while the Reds are flying high in England

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The perceptions of Fenway Sports Group (FSG) as an ownership group could hardly differ on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For football fans, they are the streetwise conglomerate that have overseen Liverpool's most successful period in the modern era. Baseball fans, however, aren't as convinced with their credentials, even in spite of bringing glory to the game.

In over two decades of presiding over the Boston Red Sox, FSG have overseen various playoff runs and even championships, but their work across the last seven years has come under major scrutiny. Now, the people of Massachusetts and New England are in revolt.

The online footballing community in Europe was taken aback in recent days after it became overwhelmed by irate Red Sox supporters lashing out at Liverpool's impending signing of Florian Wirtz for a package worth up to £116 million ($156m). GOAL investigates how a British-record transfer has managed to anger the north-eastern corner of the United States…

Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱Getty Images SportCurse of the Bambino

Our tale starts nearly a whole century ago. Red Sox fans may not like this sentiment right now, but FSG weren't always seen as the bringers of doom, far from it.

The most famous name in all of baseball is Babe Ruth. He transcends the sport even to this day, despite not playing for 90 years and being dead for the last 77. Ruth, nicknamed 'The Bambino', spent his first five years in Major League Baseball with the Red Sox, before being sold by team owner Harry Frazee to the rival New York Yankees. It's a deal that haunted Boston, as a city and a franchise, for generations.

The Red Sox went 86 years without winning another championship, despite dominating the early years of MLB with Ruth front and centre to their success. On the flip side, the Yankees became the biggest team in the game, driving the passionate people of Boston crazy. They wanted out of the curse supposedly bestowed upon them and went to extreme lengths to remove it. A fan is said to have placed a Red Sox cap atop Mount Everest and burned one of the Yankees, while exorcisms were held outside their Fenway Park home stadium.

FSG purchased the Red Sox in 2002. One year later, they reached the World Series for a shot at snapping their championship duck, but fell to the Florida Marlins 4-2 in a best-of-seven series. Twelve months on, the Red Sox found themselves 3-0 down to the Yankees in the AL Championship Series (effectively the semi-finals), and it seemed the curse would live on. And yet, they rallied back to remarkably win 4-3, before sweeping the St Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

The Curse of the Bambino was lifted just two years into FSG's tenure. From there, the Red Sox became a consistent playoff and championship contender, winning further titles in 2007 and 2013. It was around this time that the group's founders, John Henry and Tom Werner, dipped their toes into football and then took a plunge by acquiring one of the most prestigious clubs of all.

AdvertisementGetty Images SportInitial investment

FSG replaced the widely unpopular Tom Hicks and George Gillett as Anfield chiefs in the autumn of 2010. The hope on Merseyside was that Henry and Werner would be able to bring the investment, love and care that had been missing from the top brass towards the end of the noughties. Despite Liverpool's success in the Champions League and FA Cup, a first Premier League title since the 1992 breakaway from the Football League still eluded them, in part because they didn't have the financial muscle to rival Manchester United or Chelsea.

But FSG found the club in a sorry state. Roy Hodgson was midway through an ill-fated half-season spell in charge amid a slide down the table, and the Reds had spent extremely poorly to try and bolster the squad the previous summer. Though the Americans' decision to sign Luis Suarez in January 2011 proved to be a huge hit, replacing £50m ($58m) Fernando Torres with Andy Carroll for £35m ($41m) did not.

Hodgson was replaced by club legend Kenny Dalglish, who despite showing signs of promise toward the end of 2010-11 with a respectable sixth-place finish, faltered the following Premier League campaign by dropping to eighth and was sacked. Nevertheless, the Scot won FSG their first trophy in football, lifting the 2012 League Cup.

Elsewhere during the 2011-12, FSG brought in chief analyst Michael Edwards from Tottenham. He would support Dalglish and his successor, Brendan Rodgers, before moving into recruitment roles upstairs.

Getty Images SportKlopp works his magic

Rodgers went close to becoming a Liverpool immortal, coming to within a Steven Gerrard slip of ending their title drought in 2013-14. He was sacked just over a year later with the team stuck in reverse again, thus ushering in the most important hire of the FSG era.

Jurgen Klopp, out of work for a few months after reinventing Borussia Dortmund and revolutionising modern pressing, was appointed manager in October 2015, almost five years to the day since FSG took control at Anfield. Within 18 months, the Reds were back in the Champions League, and two years later they had won it. With Edwards in charge of identifying players to improve the squad, the club transformed from mere contenders to perennial winners.

Klopp providedthe springboard fora sustained period of greatness. In nine years at the helm, he won every trophy available to Liverpool (barring the Europa League) at least once. FSG didn't need to be in the foreground of operations, for the most part letting Klopp, Edwards and Co get on with their jobs, with interventions largely only made to lend the club money to afford upgrades and expansions to Anfield as a stadium.

Getty Images SportBitter in Boston

To this point, and probably to the annoyance of their detractors, we've painted FSG as an all-conquering beast of sports. Which, well, isn't true, but given their track record you can be forgiven for thinking that may be the case.

That's not to say they haven't had their bumps along the road, even with Liverpool. In April 2021, their desire to break away and form the European Super League, as well as 'Project Big Picture' a few months prior, was met with substantial rejection among fans, leading to its swift collapse in a matter of days. Sections of the online fanbase, meanwhile, have been critical of their investment in both the men's and women's teams. These are, however, not problems or negatives which are exclusive to only them.

But this is where Boston comes back into play. The Red Sox last won the World Series in 2018, when they seemed destined to start a new dynasty, fronted by star player Mookie Betts. Just over a year later, Betts was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, partly because FSG did not want to hand him what would later become the third-most lucrative contract in North American sports history at $365m (£271m). It's the equivalent of Liverpool deciding that during Mohamed Salah's prime, they wouldn't bow to his contract demands, and instead shipped him off to Arsenal for the privilege. Betts has also won two World Series with the Dodgers, so imagine Salah actually brought Premier League and Champions League glory to the Gunners too.

FSG's reputation back home is that they are considerably 'cheap and uninterested' compared to other sports owners – ironically, Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly holds a 20 percent stake in Dodgers. Trading away Betts, for a measly haul to boot, has seen the local media already talk of a successor to the Curse of the Bambino.