Liverpool Soccer Players Honor 9/11, Visit Museum
Four members of the Liverpool Football Club – including professional soccer coaches, managers and former players – visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum on Thursday. In addition to a museum tour, they honored 9/11 victim Sergio Gabriel Villanueva at the memorial and laid a wreath at the Survivor Tree.
The soccer club was accompanied by 9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels and Tim Brown, a retired 20-year Fire Department of New York (FDNY) firefighter who spent two years on special detail to the federal government and who has become a well-known media commentator on 9/11. Villanueva was his friend who played for the College Point Flames, a Long Island FDNY soccer team, and whose career included both the FDNY and the Police Department of New York.
Among the other attendees were Brendan Rodgers, a Northern Irish soccer coach, former player and current manager of Premier League club Liverpool; Ian Rush, a Welsh former soccer player; Kenny Dalglish, Scottish former soccer player and manager; and Robbie Fowler, a retired English professional soccer player and coach.
At the Survivor Tree, Rodgers presented a Liverpool jersey to Daniels and to Brown, who is donating his jersey to FDNY Captain Joe Brosi, Villanueva’s friend and an FDNY soccer coach.
By Jordan Friedman, 9/11 Memorial Research and Digital Projects Associate
The 9/11 Memorial held a ceremony on Friday, July 25 on the plaza to welcome former U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Pitts, a recent recipient of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor.
Jan Seidler Ramirez was brought on as the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s Chief Curator in 2006, but her collection of September 11th content began five years earlier, only a few hours after the attacks.