What football team does Andy Burnham support?

ANDY Burnham is swapping the Manchester Mayor’s office for No10, taking over from Sir Keir Starmer as PM today (July 20). But long before he was running the country, Burnham was just a young boy on the terraces at Goodison Park, and his allegiance has never wavered. Andy Burnham supports Everton Credit: Zenpix The new PM is a pretty decent striker too Credit: Alamy What football does Andy Burnham support? Andy Burnham has followed Everton since he was a toddler, and can even remember the first game he ever saw live. He told FourFourTwo: “It would have been around 1973 and I would have only been about two or three years old. Sign up for the Politics newsletter Thank you! “I have a very dim memory of going up the steps to the game and seeing the green. “One of the games I do remember was against Bristol City at Goodison in 1976. It was my brother’s 8th birthday and we beat them 2-0. “The other one that sticks in my mind from that era is against Sunderland with big Duncan McKenzie running the show. He was like a matador.“ His first footballing idol was Bob Latchford, who he remembers scoring a late penalty to claim a newspaper prize for reaching 30 league goals in the 1977-78 season. The new PM still owns the Everton scarf he was given as a Christmas present in 1976, which he took to every game he attended in the 80s and 90s. He holds a season ticket at Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium, having previously had one at Goodison Park. Most read in The Sun Does the new PM follow another club? Burnham has spoken about a second footballing love alongside Everton. He said: “I’m a lone campaigner for Everton and Celtic being the true and original partnership. “My upbringing was, ‘This is the clubs you support’. When I see this cult and love-in with the other lot [Liverpool] and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, I struggle with that. He added: “For me, it was always Everton and Celtic and links were going back with players like Bobby Collins. John Collins also played for both clubs.” Has Andy Burnham ever played football? Burnham played for the football team while studying English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. In 1998, he took a job as an administrator on the government’s Football Task Force – a body set up under sports minister Tony Banks to give fans a greater say in the game. Burnham playing in the annual Labour v journalists football match ahead of the 2017 Labour Party conference in Brighton Credit: Alamy Around the same period, Burnham turned out as a striker for the New Labour advisory team, Demon Eyes. It was made up largely of fellow Labour special advisers and rising politicians of the era, including Ed Balls and David Miliband. Burnham and Balls played up front together, with the latter telling The Observer: “As dual strikers who both thought we were the main centre-forward, it was more of a competitive rivalry than a perfect partnership. “The cliched thing to say would be that you never knew whether Andy would drift out to the left, or out to the right, but old jokes aside, he was a hell of a striker who always knew how to find the back of the net.” In July 2003, when Burnham was the MP for Leigh, he came on as an 88th-minute substitute for Conference club Leigh RMI in a pre-season friendly against Everton, which finished 1-1 at Hilton Park. He has kept lacing up his boots since becoming a public figure, regularly playing in a Labour conference football match against the press alongside teammates including London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Burnham has also turned out for charity fixtures in Greater Manchester, including a match for Salford Lads and Girls Club. Most recently, in May 2026, he scored twice for Booth Centre FC in their annual charity match against The Rest of the World, raising funds for people affected by homelessness. Comment now