Fans streamed towards the futuristic-looking stadium past the Bramley Moore pub, which has sat just over the road from the historic old dock wall since 1758 and has seen a marked increase in the number of day-trippers on the long-deserted Regent Road since construction started.
Rob Halligan was even bolder, saying: "I've had a season ticket since 1995, when we won the FA Cup, and we have won nothing since, so the first season in here we are going to win the FA Cup!".
It took just 12 minutes for Wigan’s Harrison Rimmer to get the first goal at the new ground - and he could not resist milking his moment in the limelight and held up six fingers in reference to Liverpool's six Champions League titles.
Plans to build on a site by the River Mersey, a 45-minute walk to the south, were abandoned in 2003 as the club could not raise the £30m investment for a share of the £125m stadium project, although they argued a large factor in the decision was that they would not own the ground.
There have been a number of false dawns and missed opportunities since the idea of leaving Goodison Park, their home since 1892, was first seriously mooted in the mid-1990s.
