Liverpool's owners made a similar call when looking to keep the Boston Red Sox on top for more than 60 years it served as Liverpool's training base but the Reds have now vacated Melwood for their new £50m complex in Kirkby.
The decision for Liverpool to leave West Derby and a training ground that has been synonymous with the Reds for decades was born out of necessity, with Fenway Sports Group seeing the move as being key to their future plans for the club as they take them into a new decade.
Bill Shankly was the first to harness the power of Melwood, his Reds revolution paving the way to many a glory.
From the Melwood pitches some 14 league titles, six European cups, seven FA Cups, eight League Cups, three UEFA Cups, four UEFA Super Cups, 15 Community Shields and one FIFA Club World Cup have been won. It's hard to imagine another place that has provided the basis for such success.
But football does not stay still, or at least it doesn't if you want to carry on competing and being at the vanguard of the game.
INSIDE LIVERPOOL'S NEW AXA TRAINING CENTER
For FSG decision to leave Melwood and head to their new complex enables them to bring together first team and Academy in one place with state of the art facilities, as well as adding more revenue streams with the new site to be known as the AXA Training Centre thanks to a multi-million pound deal that builds on AXA's existing, and substantial, sponsorship of Liverpool's training kit.
Having a state of the art base has long been seen as the building blocks of success by FSG, and it is something that they identified back home in the United States with the Boston Red Sox.
While the term 'spring training' may mean little to those not au fait with Major League Baseball this side of the Atlantic, across the pond it is a pretty big deal.
Spring training forms the starting point for an MLB season, a place where roster spots are available and teams go through an intense period of practice ahead of a punishing season, one that takes in some 162 games in a regular season.
In order to prepare for such a mammoth schedule, spring training takes on huge significance to MLB teams, spending some five weeks between February and late March to complete their roster and fine tune their game, all in front of the gaze of the watching public.
When FSG arrived at Boston in 2002 the Red Sox hadn't won a World Series since 1918 - some 84 years.
They were holding their spring training camps in the warm climate of Florida at the City of Palms Park, as had been their base from 1993.
It was functional but did not have the facilities that FSG knew that they needed to be at the front of the pack in the MLB into the 2010s and beyond. It didn't hamper the efforts to snap the barren World Series run, though, the Red Sox bringing an end to their drought in 2004 before lifting the same title three years later.
But FSG knew they needed more from their spring training base, not only to afford themselves the best chance of competing on the field but also ensuring they received a boost to the balance sheet through increased revenue streams.
And so, after initially searching to make the move from City of Palms Park in 2008 following the second World Series title under FSG ownership, ground was broken on a new site in the Sunshine State in 2010 - the JetBlue Park at Fort Myers. Construction began in 2011.
The stadium, which was built to the exact dimensions of the Red Sox's Fenway Park home, was become part of a wider strategy with FSG also proceeding with plans for state of the art training facilities in Fort Myers, named Fenway South.
JetBlue Park and Fenway South formed a major facility, one with an 11,000 seater stadium, six baseball pitches as well as training and medical facilities, all for a cost of around £59m and opened almost a year on from ground being broken, the ribbon cut in March of 2012.
The move brought more success for the Red Sox and FSG with another World Series arriving 12 months later before the fourth of their reign - and ninth in Red Sox history - was won in 2018.
Commercially they have been partnered with JetBlue, a major American airline with a considerable base at Boston's Logan International Airport, since the opening of the facility in 2012. An eight year deal was signed to the tune of more than £15m, according to the Boston Globe.
For FSG the move for Liverpool from Melwood to Kirkby makes sense and creates a synergy between them and the Red Sox.
They believe that it is the pathway to ensuring that they remain a force at the very summit of world football for the coming decades, a place that will likely harness a more forensic look at the way the Reds go about their business and how they adopt the use of sports analytics moving forward.
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