Sports Jargon: The Kop

What is it?The Kop is a terrace at a football ground, traditionally a standing area but now largely all-seated at the bigger stadia.

The name – need you be told? – is most associated with Liverpool’s Anfield ground, their large terrace behind one of the goals home to 12,390 ‘Kopites’. It used to have a 30,000 capacity but was rebuilt following the recommendations of the Taylor Report in to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. The club’s plans for its new stadium, Stanley Park, include an 18,000 capacity Kop.

Several other football grounds have, through the years, had terraces known as The Kop, among them the homes of Sheffield United and Wednesday.

The origin of the name?It comes from The Battle of Spion Kop in the Boer War in January, 1900 when the British were defeated, losing over 300 men. Spioenkop is an Afrikaans name – spioen meaning look-out or spy, kop meaning hill – and was the largest hill in the area and centre of the fiercest fighting in the battle.

Spioenkop resembled a football terrace, many of which at the time were no more than steep, grassy embankments, and to commemorate the battle many of these terraces (including one at Arsenal’s old ground in London) came to be known as Kops.

Many of the Lancashire Fusiliers who died in the battle were from Liverpool, prompting the Liverpool Echo sports editor Ernest Edwards to dub Anfield’s new open-air embankment ‘The Kop’ in 1906, the terrace given the name officially in 1928 when a roof was built.