Scouser Dennis Marsh flies to Everton games from Switzerland after moving to Zurich as a high-flying chartered accountant but insists fellow Blues supporters keep him grounded
Switzerland-based Evertonian Dennis Marsh outside his dad's old house, 37 Goodison Road, which has now become famous for people signing the wall in the hallway
Switzerland-based Evertonian Dennis Marsh outside his dad's old house, 37 Goodison Road, which has now become famous for people signing the wall in the hallway
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A Scouser who made a new life for himself as a high-flying chartered accountant in Switzerland and now travels 2,000 miles to attend Everton games believes his beloved Blues are an attractive investment opportunity as The Friedkin Group look to sell up.
Everton’s Houston-based owners announced on October 9 that the club was up for sale, less than 22 months after they had completed their takeover to obtain Farhad Moshiri’s 99.5% controlling stake.
As financial consultant for World Wildlife Fund Switzerland, Dennis Marsh was part of the team that won first prize for the Greening Financial Regulation Initiative at the United Nations’ International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR) Honours in 2024 in Geneva and he has worked with financial heavyweights such as the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, Bank of Switzerland and Bank of China.
But the 65-year-old – who has just retired – leaving him with even more time to devote to his long-distance support of Everton reckons that new investors will like what they see at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
Asked if he thinks the club is an attractive proposition, Dennis told the ECHO: “Definitely. First of all, they’ve got a brand-new stadium and if they get their act together off the pitch in terms of concerts and other non-football events.
“They’ve got to stay in the Premier League but if they were to win something they would get a virtuous circle. If you look at The Friedkin Group, they were very smart, they turned that debt into equity.
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“Farhad Moshiri had an interest free loan and they persuaded him to change that debt into shares with a no jam today, jam tomorrow proposition. To do that, I think they played a blinder.
“They’ve acquired an £800million stadium at less than cost price and professionalised the financial state of the club to make it doable for new buyers. I believe their intention was always to flip Everton and make a profit.
“We need an owner to come in who can be convinced that they can continue the good work the Friedkins have done. Although we’ve currently got a small squad, I think all the other things are in place to make a success with the fanbase, stadium and the manager.”
Dennis, who lives close to Zurich Airport, takes advantage of there being typically 10 flights a day to the UK from the principal hub of Swiss International Air Lines, but even with this service, rescheduling for television can wreak havoc with his plans and Everton’s 3-1 win over Coventry City on Friday was one of the few fixtures he’s missed in recent years.
He said: “I get to virtually every home game and many of the aways, especially the London ones when I can stay with my daughter. These last-minute changes for television are a pain in the a**e though but if I can’t make it, I’ve got cousins who are members and I pass my ticket on.”
Indeed, family is the key to Dennis’ lifelong love affair with Everton and with his granddaughter Eileen now being brought up as a Blue, he counts six generations as being supporters, starting with his great-grandfather who was born in 1878, the same year as the club. Dennis used to live a Jordan Pickford punt away from Goodison Park in Salop Street – now the home of the Blue Base, a venue operated by Everton in the Community.
Meanwhile, his father, John, who served with the Scots Guards during the Second World War, and who he later found out was a British PoW at Auschwitz (obtaining his records from the Red Cross when travelling to the UN), was even closer – a mere Jake O’Brien throw-in as it were – living at 37 Goodison Road, the house where various players and managers from Everton and visiting teams have signed the wall in the hallway after matches at the Blues’ former home. Ironically Dennis’ dad was a Liverpool fan, but still took him to games at Goodison where there was a strong presence from his maternal side of the family.
Dennis said: “Everton to me has been the glue, the one constant in my life, with family. When I come home to these games, it really keeps me grounded.
“You know what Scousers are like, they won’t let you get away with anything – which is great. I have built a wonderful life abroad, but I love Scousers, they bring me back to earth and remind me who I am.”
Dennis Marsh celebrates on the Goodison Park pitch with one of his cousins after Everton came from 2-0 down to defeat Crystal Palace 3-2 on May 19, 2022
Dennis Marsh celebrates on the Goodison Park pitch with one of his cousins after Everton came from 2-0 down to defeat Crystal Palace 3-2 on May 19, 2022
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Dennis, who always watched his Goodison Park football from the Paddock, can chart his own Everton memories back as far as the 1967/68 season but it’s been something of a roller-coaster since then.
He said: “I remember the 1969/70 League Championship-winning season very well. I can recall the first home game against Crystal Palace when we won 2-1 and the Goodison Road was half and half with the old main stand and the new one which was being built plus the first penalty shoot-out in the European Cup the following season when we beat Borussia Monchengladbach.
“My first season ticket was in 1976/77 when we got to play three League Cup finals against Aston Villa, although we ultimately missed out on the trophy, losing to Aston Villa after the second replay. Our Tony, my elder brother used to take me everywhere, as he was born in 1947 and I was born in 1961, so there was 14 years between us and he would regale me about the 1963 title-winning team.
“We’d all meet up in my granddad’s house just off Everton Valley. Having been a teenager in a comprehensive school in Everton, not lifting a trophy between 1970-84 felt like an eternity so I totally get it for the younger fans now who have had to wait 30 years, an entire generation or more – my son is 35 and he can’t remember seeing us in anything.
“I’m old enough to remember being the number one club in Merseyside. We had all these records and firsts, but having lived through all Liverpool’s dominance in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when we won the FA Cup in 1984, it felt like my generation.
“I’d been taken to the game as a child and been spoilt by the expectations of winning games and winning trophies. The way Liverpool and Manchester United fans have been for a long time now and even Manchester City fans of recent years, you thought that’s the way it is and you don’t know any different.”
Everton’s most successful season of 1984/85 fittingly also became a pivotal moment in Dennis’ personal life as he struck up a relationship with his Italian wife. Although Juventus is her first footballing love, she too became an adopted Blue.
Dennis said: “I had an Everton friend who was teaching in Bologna and I met Alessandra in 1984 just after we won the cup. When she first came to England, we went to what Gavin Buckland described as the best game he’d ever been to, the 2-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane on April 3, 1985.
“I met her at Victoria Station and she’d come over with my friend Chris Nolan, who is a big Blue. That was our ‘first date’ as it were in England. She loves football. All her family are football mad and she really feels it with Everton.
“Back then, I must have taken her to about 50 games and she’d never seen us lose. However, she was nearly as upset as I was when we lost the first derby at Hill Dickinson Stadium.”
Dennis Marsh with his Italian wife Alessandra outside Everton's new Hill Dickinson Stadium
Dennis Marsh with his Italian wife Alessandra outside Everton's new Hill Dickinson Stadium
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Dennis – who also recalls a less glamorous trip to White Hart Lane the following season for a goalless draw in the snow in the Screen Sports Super Cup semi-final first leg watched by just 7,548 when he was allowed to drag his suitcase onto the terraces because he was flying out the next day – went on to have his first spell living abroad in Italy before returning to England in 1992.
Feeling that he had paid his dues in terms of following Everton in good times and bad, he remembers those days fondly and said: “I didn’t have as much money then and it was in the days before low-cost air travel but I’d still come over and watch some of the games while my mum would send me the Pink from the ECHO.
“I left school with very few qualifications, but my wife told me that you’ve got to do something with your brains and I worked bloody hard at becoming a chartered accountant.”
The family returned to the UK in 1992, enabling Dennis to continue his penchant for bringing bulky items into football grounds the next year as he took his son to watch Everton’s game against Nottingham Forest at Goodison Park in a pram.
The Blues raced into a 3-0 half-time lead over Brian Clough’s side who were destined for relegation in what proved to be their legendary manager’s final season in charge, with the final goal coming from an Andy Hinchcliffe free-kick inside the penalty area after keeper Mark Crossley picked up a back pass in the first campaign after the new law came in.
In terms of the infant’s interest in the action after no further goals were scored after the interval, Dennis quips: “Nick fell asleep at half-time but so did the team!”
As his son grew older though, he inherited his passion for Everton though and it was at a meet and greet event with the squad in the early 2000s though that Dennis first encountered David Moyes’ determination to uphold standards – in dramatic fashion.
He said: “We went to watch to watch Everton train at Bellefield and we met all the players, including his favourites like Duncan Ferguson and Tommy Gravesen but Alessandro Pistone, who had also been part of the session was nowhere to be seen. Nick, like the rest of the family, speaks fluent Italian and I said to David Moyes: ‘Do you know where Alessandro is? My son would like to have a chat with him in Italian.’
“Moyes looked around, but couldn’t see him and he told us: ‘Hold on a sec.’ The next thing that happens is he goes through a door and hauls Pistone out of the shower.
“He was covered in water and is dripping with the towel around him, but he brought him over so my son could talk to him. I felt really embarrassed and thought you didn’t have to do that.
“Fast forward to now and Everton are in a tough position. Thank God we’ve got someone like David Moyes because I think he’s in his element with the siege mentality.
“While he’s frustrated me and a lot of others with his substitutions, overall, come on. We’ve got a small squad, we’re doing so well, we’re still in the League Cup and the players love him.”
Dennis' son Nick and daughter Arianna with Everton player Tim Cahill on January 28, 2006
Dennis' son Nick and daughter Arianna with Everton player Tim Cahill on January 28, 2006
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Dennis has now been living in Switzerland since February 2009 but while that move enabled him to work for some top financial institutions and have a home set against a beautiful landscape, health is always the most important thing and it was Everton who came calling – literally – when he faced his own biggest battle.
He said: “Our children are Scouse-Italian, which is a blessing and a curse. Both my wife and I were strong characters and after me moving out to Italy and then us returning to the UK for 15 years, we thought we’ve got to go and live in a neutral country and I got a job in Switzerland.
“A few years ago, I felt very weak and was diagnosed with a very rare cancer that even most doctors don’t even know, it’s called POEMS syndrome. They told me that it’s not curable, but we can treat you with some groundbreaking treatment.
“They used my own stem cells for a bone marrow transplant. They put them into a machine, put them through a processing filter to clean them and then froze them.
“I then had to undergo an intense course of chemotherapy that you’ve got to be fit enough to survive – it’s either kill or cure – but after a massive blast and your immune system going down to zero with no white blood cells, they gave me my stem cells back, straight into the heart. I asked what happens then and they told me in a primitive manner that they swim to the problem.
“My son Nick contacted Everton, and I got a phone call out of the blue from Michael Keane.
Dennis Marsh with Michael Keane in Switzerland when Everton played Stade Nyonnais in a friendly on July 14, 2023
Dennis Marsh with Michael Keane in Switzerland when Everton played Stade Nyonnais in a friendly on July 14, 2023
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“We chatted for half an hour and I have to say what an absolute gentleman he is, he is a credit to his family. We got on really well, we’ve met up a couple of times since, and he still messages me from time to time on WhatsApp.
“It was really refreshing because you hear a lot of stories about Premier League players being up themselves and detached from reality because they’re earning so much money but I can really see why Michael is in David Moyes’ good books because the manager has got certain values. I think he will look favourably on players like him and Merlin Rohl who have got the right attitude.
“I’ve got a new life following the stem cell transplant. I’ve had so many good times, even when Everton have lost, just talking to people over a pint – it’s very special.”
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