Column: I felt safe - he had an LFC scarf

There was a perception from some quarters in days of yore that to be a true Liverpool fan you had to be born within the shadow of Anfield. Knowing the songs was all well and good, but to have your opinion counted you really needed to have been delivered onto the pitch by Shankly himself. Supporters from far-flung places were a thing for other teams, not us.

As football has become a global game that notion has melted away for most, with only the internet's crankiest troll insisting the right to be a fan of the club is reserved exclusively for the locals.

The level of support demonstrated in Asia and Australia last month blew me away. Hearing more than 95,000 people singing You'll Never Walk Alone was a spine-tingling experience and, one imagines, a humbling one for the players and staff who were present.

Yet it tallied entirely with my own recent experiences. At the start of July, I landed in Kuala Lumpur after roughly 18 hours of travelling. I was running on fumes and more than a little bit tetchy. My mood brightened immediately, though, when I sat on the coach to travel to the city centre and saw a Liverpool scarf hanging above the driver's head. It shouldn't have mattered, of course. But somehow it did. As if I was now in safe hands and everything would be okay.

When I managed to venture out into Kuala Lumpur itself I found more of the same. From the large Standard Chartered logo adorning a building right next to my hotel through to the Liverpool branded merchandise available in the local shops, links to the club seemed to be present everywhere.

It wasn't just Liverpool, of course. The Premier League is a worldwide commodity and the presence of other clubs could certainly be felt in and around Kuala Lumpur. There was a large amount of Chelsea paraphernalia available in the Malaysian equivalent of the pound shop, for example. But Liverpool were the overwhelming favourites when it came to the locals declaring their loyalties. 

It was a similar scenario in the Nation of Brunei. From Liverpool tops through to bumper stickers, the club appeared to be branded on anything and everything. I even saw a car with two large Liver Birds and the word 'Liverpool' stamped along the side of it as I travelled to the airport to begin my journey home.

I was ruminating about all of this whilst sat on the plane ready to take-off when the gentleman next to me noticed my Liverpool iPad cover.

"You're a Liverpool fan," he exclaimed. "Excellent choice!"

It transpired that I wasn't the only one. Edmund Chin is a 23-year-old auditor who was born and raised in Brunei Darussalam. In 2008 he was accepted onto a course at the University of Warwick to study finance. His first act in the country was to purchase his Liverpool membership.

"My first memories of Liverpool were hearing the names of Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen in 2001," he explained. "They won everything bar the Premier League that year and my friends and I would stay up late to watch them. It was only natural that when I went to England I wanted to travel to Anfield as much as possible."

Edmund told me that keeping up to date with Liverpool news is easy enough now he's returned to Brunei, with the BBC, Bleacher Report and the Liverpool website all easily accessible. Watching games, though, is a little bit trickier.

"I work for Deloitte and Touche here in Brunei," he said. "So finding the balance between staying up late to watch the game and being fresh for work is tough. Whenever possible, though, my friends and I will gather late at night with a couple of drinks and watch the match in someone's living room. It isn't quite Anfield, but it's not a bad alternative!"

Of course the local fans will always be the lifeblood of the support base - and so they should. But chatting to people like Edmund helps you to realise the importance of things like the club's recent Twitter activity.

Seeing a new signing holding a shirt with a welcome in Chinese might seem like a marketing ploy to some. Perhaps it is. But to a kid in the Shandong Province it might just be the catalyst they need to forge a lifelong love of LFC.

As fans we are often impossible to please. We want to be a global powerhouse with the ability to compete with the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea in the transfer market. But we also want to do it by being financially sound and without a footballing sugar daddy pulling the strings. We want to be the club that represents the heartbeat of the city, but we also want to be proud of our worldwide appeal.

It's a delicate tightrope for those at the top to walk.

But whether you live along the Scotty Road and wander under the Shankly Gates on a match day or have to set your alarm for silly o'clock to watch the game on TV like Edmund, the important thing is we all want the same thing: a Liverpool win. And that is a truly global desire.

Follow the author @Adam_Smith_82.