Together with director André Schäfer, the actor and professed BVB fan Joachim Król is on the hunt for clues: What are the roots of the most famous football anthem in the world? ‘You'll never walk alone’ touches millions, even those outside of the stadium.

And yet hardly anybody knows the incredible story of this song; it is a colourful and moving tale, that begins in Budapest and continues on Broadway in New York.

In the same year that Borussia Dortmund was founded, the play ‘Liliom’ opened in Budapest. 35 years later, following the withdrawal of the Nazis, the Hungarian-German-Jewish playwright Ferenc Molnár, who by this time had emigrated to New York, approved a musical version. The musical ‘Carousel’ was the result. After being translated into English, ‘You'll never walk alone’ was heard for the first time.

 

This song's path into a football stadium, namely Anfield in Liverpool, takes a further detour. In the 1960s, Gerry Marsden, the singer for the band Gerry and the Pacemakers, was sheltering in the cinema having just been to see a Laurel & Hardy Film. It was raining cats and dogs on this particular day in the busy port city in England. Marsden, who was 16 years old at the time, says: "I didn't want to get wet and had a look, what else was on in the cinema." ‘Carousel’ was on. "The film was really tacky, and I actually thought about going out into the rain, when suddenly I heard a ballad that captivated me."

Marsden had to overcome resistance from his band before the song was released on 4th October 1963. Three weeks later it was top of the the charts and had also found its way into Anfield. The number 1 hit at the time was always played before Liverpool home matches. One particular track, ‘You'll never walk alone’, took its place in the fans' hearts. Forever.

At Anfield and the Signal Iduna Park, it is simply an anthem. When a spectator succumbed to a heart attack ten weeks ago, 81,000 fans expressed their sorrow for one of their own, who had lost his life in his stadium during a BVB match, with a reverence that had never been seen before in the form of a fervent rendition of ‘You'll never walk alone’.

Director André Schäfer revealed that "we are searching for clues" during a test shoot in Dortmund on 14th May. This hunt should lead them via Liverpool, Budapest and New York and end in Dortmund in September. The film will be released in cinemas in early 2017. Leading actor Joachim Król stood in Block 10 of the south stand during the match against 1. FC Köln and sang the famous anthem alongside 28,000 standing fans, who were then joined by the rest of the stadium. As the popular actor states: "Both of my passions flow into one another here – the professional side with acting and my sporting love of Borussia Dortmund." The project is being developed in cooperation with Evonik.
Boris Rupert