by Oliver Kay
NOW that the lies, the smears and cruel myths about the Hillsborough disaster have been exposed once and for all, those who clung to them out of warped tribalism have but one straw left to clutch. “What about justice for Heysel?”, they plead. “What about the truth of what happened there?”
Actually, they might have a point, even if they raise it out of malice rather than consideration for the bereaved. The publication – and belated national acceptance – of the real truth about Hillsborough has been a source of great vindication for all who were affected by that tragedy. But questions undoubtedly remain about the Heysel Stadium disaster, in which 39 spectators – 32 from Italy, four from Belgium, two from France, one from Northern Ireland – were killed in a stampede before the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus.
Those bereaved and outraged by Hillsborough have fought to keep their campaign for justice alive and been entirely vindicated for doing so. By contrast, Heysel remains the tragedy that dares not speak its name. So let us talk about it. Let us state a few of the facts about whether justice was done.
We all know that English football, collectively, was punished, with clubs excluded from Uefa competition. Liverpool immediately withdrew, in disgrace, from the next season’s Uefa Cup. Within hours the FA, under pressure from the government, announced that no English club would play in the following season’s Uefa competition – and that of course included Everton, denied a tilt at the European Cup, and Norwich City, denied a first ever European campaign. Two days later Uefa announced an indefinite ban on English clubs. It ended up at five years, with Liverpool serving a sixth as punishment for their supporters’ behaviour at Heysel.
This was not a knee-jerk reaction to a one-off night of mayhem. This – both the sanction and, it could be argued, the widespread loss of life – had been coming. Heysel was the disgraceful culmination of more than a decade of ugly incidents involving English supporters on their European travels: Tottenham Hotspur in Rotterdam in 1974 and 1983, Leeds United in Paris in 1975, Manchester United in St Etienne in 1977, the national team in Basle in 1981 and so on until the spiral of moronic violence reached its tragic conclusion – logical in one sense, crazy in all others – in Brussels.
As to whether individuals were brought to account, 27 arrests were made on suspicion of manslaughter and 26 men were charged. (These, incidentally, do not tend to be described as Liverpool supporters – in part because of claims at the time from John Smith, the club’s chairman, and two Merseyside councilors that National Front members from London had been responsible. There are many sensitive issues here, but let us not pussyfoot over this one. As Tony Evans, football editor of The Times and author of Far Foreign Land, a brilliant book about his experiences following Liverpool at Heysel and all over Europe, put it: “It was a red herring. Hooligans from the far right would not have been welcome.”)
The prosecutions stemmed from television camera footage of the charge – the third such charge in a matter of minutes – that led directly to the deaths of those 39 innocent spectators. There are dozens of points that are usually offered to explain the context, not least over ticketing, segregation and a crumbling stadium, but the context does not begin to excuse what happened. No amount of context ever could.
Those stampedes might have been considered standard terrace fare at the time, a token act of territorialism and intimidation, but it led innocent fans to flee in terror. Some tried to climb a wall to escape. The wall crumbled. Thirty-nine people were crushed to death. The world was appalled. Turin went into mourning. Liverpool and their supporters were left to live with what they know, 27 years later, to be an indelible stain.
As for “justice”, an initial inquiry by Marina Coppieters, a leading Belgian judge, found after 18 months that the police and the authorities, in addition to Liverpool supporters, should face charges. Quite apart from the hooliganism, ticketing arrangements and police strategy and responses were criticised. By this stage, English supporters were regarded across Europe as such animals that shock was expressed at how the authorities had played into their hands.
There was bewilderment, too, at the choice of stadium. And where have you heard that before? Uefa chose a ground that had been built in the 1920s and condemned in the early 1980s for failing to meet modern safety standards, which were far from stringent. Evans recalls that the outer wall, made of cinder block, was decaying, that he was not required to show his ticket and that, long before the stampede, he saw a crash barrier in front of him crumble.
Jacques Georges, the Uefa president at the time, and Hans Bangerter, his general secretary, were threatened with imprisonment but eventually given conditional discharges. Albert Roosens, the former secretary-general of the Belgian Football Union (BFU), was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for “regrettable negligence” with regard to ticketing arrangements. So was gendarme captain Johan Mahieu, who was in charge of the policing the stands at Heysel. “He made fundamental errors,” Pierre Verlynde, the judge, said. “He was far too passive. I find his negligence extraordinary.”
In 1989, after a five-month trial in Brussels, 14 of the 26 Liverpool supporters who stood trial were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and given a three-year prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and each ended up serving about a year in total in behind bars. The remaining ten defendants were acquitted of manslaughter, but some had their £2,000 bail money confiscated, having been absent for part of the trial. And civil damages estimated at more than £5million were provisionally awarded to families of the Heysel victims against the convicted fans and the BFU.
But you never hear of this because the tragedy is taboo. It was only brought into the open when Liverpool and Juventus were drawn together in the Champions League quarter-final in 2005, at which point the Merseyside club, after consultation with their Italian counterparts, announced it would be a game of “friendship”. Before the first leg at Anfield, Liverpool supporters held up a mosaic to form the word “amicizia”. Some of the visiting Juventus fans applauded. Most, it seemed, turned their backs in disgust. And while the rejection of the olive branch met with a little consternation on Merseyside, Liverpool’s supporters know all too well about the type of apology that comes too late, brought by events, to sound truly sincere.
Heysel is an unspeakably awkward subject for Liverpool – perhaps more, perhaps less, for the anguish the club and the city endured four years later at Hillsborough. It is a black mark and it will be there forever. Supporters of rival teams chant “Murderers” and the Liverpool fans have little response. On one infamous occasion at Goodison Park in 2008, the away fans responded by singing “2-0 to the Murderers”. I know that this was somewhere between a knee-jerk response and an attempt to “reclaim” that offensive description, but it sounded awful. Were they listening in Turin? You would hope not.
For many years, Liverpool ’s response to Heysel was woefully inadequate. I was shown a copy of the club’s official yearbook for 1985/86. There were two articles about the tragedy on page three, but they were both of the “Let’s put this behind us, improve the matchday Anfield atmosphere and look to restore the club’s good name” variety. There was no direct reference to what had happened. There was no hint of an apology. Later there was a round-up of the previous European Cup campaign, in which 1985/86 was identified as a “watershed” because it would be Liverpool ’s last for some time.
Over time, there was a recognition that more – much more – needed to be done. In 2000 the city of Liverpool officially commemorated the anniversary of Heysel for the first time – on the suggestion, incidentally, of Peter Millea, the chairman of Liverpool City Council’s Hillsborough disaster working party.
They do at least now have a memorial plaque at Anfield, they do have extensive coverage of the tragedy on their official website and they do pay tribute on May 30 every year, even if it took far too long for the club to recognise the tragedy and the stain it had left — not unlike Sheffield Wednesday with Hillsborough, although the circumstances there involved appalling failures at executive level.
Heysel is a huge stain on Liverpool ’s history. It is undeniable. And yet none of this diminishes the club’s or the supporters’ right to grieve or to campaign or to express anger over what happened in Sheffield four years later.
One real mystery surrounding Heysel is that the tragedy is even more of a taboo in Turin.
Go on to the Italian club’s official website in search of a tribute and you will struggle to find anything beyond 106 words within a 645-word article called “Juventus wins everything”, a tribute to their successes in the 1970s and 1980s.
Of the club’s first European Cup triumph in 1985, it says: “The long-awaited success in Europe ’s highest accolade was tainted with sadness” … “Something unexplainable happened …. and 39 innocent victims lost their lives. Football, from that moment, would never be the same again.” … “It’s a joyless success, but the victory enabled the Bianconeri to fly to Tokyo in winter to play the Intercontinental Cup final. Argentinos Junior were beaten on penalties and Juve were the world champions.”
You will have to do an archive search to find anything more than that – specifically a couple of news articles on the anniversary. One includes details of a permanent Heysel exhibit at the museum which opened last year at the new Juventus Stadium. The club has decided that relatives of the victims will always be allowed permanent free access to the museum.
This is progress. For many years the bereaved met with what they perceived to be a sense of denial from Juventus about a disaster that overshadowed the club’s long-awaited first European Cup win. In The Truths of Heysel – a book written by Andrea Lorentini, whose father Roberto died in Brussels and whose grandfather Otello has led the campaign for the victims to be officially recognised by the club – writes of the “bewilderment, reticence, guilty silences and suspicion” the bereaved have faced in their dealings with Juventus.
Justice for Heysel? There can never be justice for 39 lives lost at a football match, but it is in Turin , not on Merseyside, that the cries of the bereaved have met with silence down the years.
The families do not want their lost ones to become a cause celebre in England , particularly not when the purpose has purely been to score points on the terraces. A little more recognition closer to home is what they want.
> This is an extended version of an article that originally appeared in The Times
A really well written piece on a difficult issue.
Thanks for posting this fellas, I had not read the full piece before. The attitude of many of our fans towards Heysel has always troubled me somewhat. The fact that there were obviously many other factors at play which actually contributed to the deaths, has perhaps given us an ‘out’ which we are sometimes too keen to take. Maybe this unwillingness to accept our part in what happened has increased other people’s eagerness to use it as a stick to beat us with over the years, albeit it often in a cheap and snidey manner at times. Then of course, Hillsborough has perhaps added another fly in the ointment, so to speak, as well as understandably overshadowing it.
Having spoken to Juve fans over the years about it, it seems many are more aware of the full details of what happened than fans of other clubs, and while some (a minority) still talk of revenge, many of them have shown a willingness to forgive. As the article touched on, it seems many Juve supporters have been more preoccupied with their own club’s attitude towards what happened. You are as likely to come across debates about how the Juve team celebrated and how the club has done little to commemorate Heysel than you are about the evil of English fans. Then of course you have the fact that many rival supporters of other Italian clubs still use it as a cheap way to have a dig at them (by waving LFC scarves and banners, singing offensive songs etc), which will be something LFC fans can all relate to.
The lack of a full and proper inquiry has also led to a lot of misconceptions too it seems, particularly among younger fans. You get the feeling UEFA has been only too keen to sweep Heysel under the carpet and consign it to history, rather than face up to its own failings on the night.
While we have finally been able to make progress with regards Hillsborough it’s sad that Heysel victims groups in Italy have had less success. While there’s not a whole lot we can about that, we can at least show some solidarity with our fellow supporters, who understand what its like to loose people so unnecessarily at a football match. I’d urge any Liverpool fan to just drop by any Juve forum from time to time and offer a conciliatory post or two. They are more approachable on the subject that many would think and are often very glad to know that we have not forgotten the 39. It’s an event that ties both clubs and will do for a long time to come. Maybe we could be doing more to cement those ties, rather than it being an event that divides us. We have much common ground here when it comes to not just Heysel, but with regards Hillsborough also.
Perhaps a podcast might be in order sometime, with a guest from the now disbanded Association for the Victims of Heysel (Lorentini?), a Juve fan or two, or an author of one of the few books written on Heysel?
Regards.
A really sensitive and wholesome piece of writing. I hope it has the necessary impact on mainstream media.
Anybody here actually at Heysel?
Great article, if you want to read more indepth articles on someone who was actually there visit:
http://tomkinstimes.com/2013/05/heysel-25-years-on-book-extract/
extracts from Chris Rowlands book From Where I Was Standing
Shocking and accurate.
Having read this and an article by Tony Evans (which this seems to draw from) it seems to contrast with the article from TTT above which largely focuses away from the fans and points to the authorities. There seems to have been many factors involved and Liverpool fans do need to accept their share of responsibility. All I remember of the game was being allowed to stay up especially, to watch it on TV and being shocked at what I saw. I do recall a massive banner with “Reds animals” written on it though.
I was at Heysel. Everyone was to blame. UEFA, organizers, stewards, police, LFC fans, Juve Fans.
I was in section Z. Never handed in my ticket.
Kevin
Ciao, scrivo dall’Italia. Hai ragione a dire che quella tragica serata erano tutti da biasimare. Tutti quanti non avrebbero potuto far di peggio. A me non è neanche piaciuta l’esultanza finale della mia Juventus.
Non ero allo stadio (per fortuna). Adesso quando penso a Liverpool mi si associano due idee molto contrastanti: i Beatles e l’Heysel.
Dopo quell’assurdo evento le istituzioni inglesi hanno messo le cose a posto negli stadi, mentre da noi in Italia …
Personalmente quella coppa la considero solo una amara statistica, e penso che nessuno sano di mente la possa associare ad una vittoria dell’una o ad una sconfitta dell’altra squadra.
Mi piacerebbe l’UEFA tolga dalle statistiche la Juve Campione d’Europa 1985-. Potrebbe essere la più bella azione di Michel Platini …..
Grazie per aver il tempo di rispondere e di procedere a tali commenti riflessivo.
An excellent, thoughtful and honest piece of writing. As a blue born after Heysel I’ve never really known the truth of what occurred that night and it has become a taboo and something you feel scared to bring up as we all want to come together in support of Hillsbrough and show a merseyside united.Very sad to think 39 families must be feeling very let down by all parties involved.
Well done Oliver, a truthful and painful piece of reading on a dark chapter of football
I am proud of the support Evertonians have offered across the Park and to the innocent families who have carried the awful burden and indescribable pain of Hillsborough. We don’t need reciprocation but the lack of it undermines Liverpool’s great history.
I originally felt dismayed at Everton’s forced European withdrawal and eventual decimation juxtaposed with Liverpool’s fortune.
But I have always felt Liverpool FC’s limited support and shirking from the truth of Heysel a disgrace. There is an annual indication and vindication of such hypocrisy every time the Kop allows the ‘Bucharest 1986’ flag to proudly fly. It’s condemnation not condonement would be a start……
Thanks for this sensitive, balanced and honest article. I was there and despite some expressions of sorrow, regret and portion of responsibility, I don’t feel these have made their way into the public consciousness. Presumably even less so in Turin. Maybe that’s as much the fault of the media as us, but can’t help feeling that we, through fans groups and forums, could express such feelings with more vigour and intent. That has always saddened me. We appear to have done great things linking up with other fans abroad, the liaisons with Borrusia and the Gate 21 supporters group being great examples, but guess Juve has been a bit nervy to approach as outlined in the article. I recognise I can do my bit as an individual like going to Juve forums as suggested (thanks) but gestures through large groups would be a more powerful message. There is an opportunity albeit a further year down the line next May on the unbelievably 30th anniversary…… I really hope we mobilise to do something’s genuine and large.
The seeds of Heysel were sown 12 months earlier in Rome when Liverpool fans were subjected to vicious attacks by Italians with no intervention from the Italian police, more than 40 liverpool fans were seriously injured (mostly stabbings) yet UEFA took no action against Roma. Little wonder then that 12 months later at Heysel Liverpool fans were packed cheek by jowl with Juventus fans trouble was bound to occur. This is no excuse for what happened that night but it does explain why a clubs fans with 21 years of spotless fans behaviour suddenly changed that night.
As a British 17 year old Juve fan, I travelled to Heysel on the Liverpool train/ferry and stood on the terraces with the Livetpool fans. Only a few hundred caused the trouble that led to the deaths, Uefa were partly culpable for the stadium choice, ticket allocation and the stadium authorities for the pathetic segregation of fans & policing.
This is a good, well reasoned article, not afraid to pull its punches. It’s weird that a tragedy like this, at a televised showcase final is so under-reported and unexamined.
I shall never forget it, nor the shock and sadness I saw on the faces of real Liverpool fans as we travelled home in the night and the news trickled in of what had happened.
Shades of ’89 in the pre mobile phone era, nor shall I forget my Dad telling me of the hours he spent on the phone to a hospital in Brussels as they read out a list of the names of the dead & injured.
I came home that day, a changed person, and hated football for a while. But you can’t hate the beautiful game forever and in 96 I travelled again, to Rome this time, and saw Juve lift the trophy in joyous circumstances. I cried in the Olimpico that night, for Juve, for me, and for the 39.
Although I was not present at Heysel,I had the misfortune to be on the ostende ferry with “fans “travelling to Heysel.I amongst many were subjected to some of the worst behaviour I have ever witnessed on a cross channel ferry.Many innocent holiday makers,many with children had their luggage stolen/robbed and then throw overboard.The ship itself was trashed and a trail of destruction left behind,this continued on the train to Brussels(I was travelling to cologne).It was also very apparent that a sgnificant proportion of the travelling fans were from other football clubs and were travelling purely for the mayhem and violence,which seems to have been the norm in Europe for English football fans at this time.Heysel was the personification of all that was wrong with English football in the eighties.
It should be noted that Liverpool did not serve the sixth year of the ban, and were allowed back in to European competition after 5 years, denying Crystal Palace a first campaign.
I have regularly commemorated the Heysel disaster, in Anfield, Brussels twice and Turin once in the past five years; to specifically mourn and honour the dead as we do here for Hillsborough. The experience is very different.
At Anfield I originally had to search for the plaque, asking security staff, the museum and the stadium tour folk before a player who was there finally took me to it. Since then I have left shirts, scarves, flowers and poems in honour of the deceased and also of both clubs. There is nowhere really to leave such mementos although they have always been respected. The location on the edge of the car park is in my view disrespectful but better than nothing. But it is not honoured.
At Heysel stadium, although that is not what it is now known as in Brussels, I was pointed to a memorial, a similar sort of size and style to the Anfield one, quite high in the left hand side of the stadium as you face the grand entrance. It is difficult to find by accident! Almost all the emphasis in and around the place and the stadium is on the fact that the stadium of the tragedy has been completely rebuilt, renamed and sanitised and please don’t mention the tragedy as things have changed.
There was nowhere to leave flowers, memories or prayers. The ones I left one evening at around 8pm were gone the next morning before 8am.
At my visit last year I met a Juve supporter at the ground. He and I both had our scarves on, we neither spoke the others language but we exchanged scarves, embraced and cried together. It was a moving moment of real reconciliation.
In Turin I asked at the tourist office about any memorial and was sent to the new ground on the edge of town. When I asked at the stadium tour office and at the Juve museum where the memorial was nobody knew. It took ten minutes before they found out, and then asked me to pay the full museum fee to go in to pay my respects. The memorial is a tall plastic column with the names engraved inside it and a very short piece in Italian. It is in a place where there is a continuous recording of singing and shouting at the Juve success and is in such a place that most folk just go straight by it. In the reports of the game there dis no mention of the disaster, just that penalty! It is an unwanted corner of history. I was given some very funny looks as I paid my respects in silent prayer, very different from the other supporters, most of whom were too young to really appreciate what I might have been doing there.
As someone who attended Heysel with my dad, there are one or two omissions in Oliver’s wonderful piece. It does not convey what happened ‘on the ground’ at Heysel. I was only 14 years old then, but I will always remember being sprayed with CS gas by someone who tapped on our taxi window, as we thought, to ask directions. I remember being waved into the stadium by the police without being asked to show our tickets, and at a time when Liverpool were usually the only English club in Europe, I remember being on the ferry to France, with people wearing Liverpool scarves, but with tee shirts bearing the name of one or two other English teams underneath, so John Smith was right about that. I guess that was the only chance many English football hooligans had to travel abroad to cause mayhem, as their teams didn’t provide them with that opportunity back then. It was a sad day for our club, and I will never forget the fans that died then, but I was there, as a boy, and it’s something that will remain with me forever.
Talking bollocks….
Ah the intellect of football fans
On the anniversary of the day of the Hillsborough disaster, you always have somebody throw in “well what about paying respect for the 39 that Liverpool Fans murdered”. It makes my blood boil, as it just completely irrelevant on the 15th April, our respects are paid every year on May 30th.
This got me thinking, as I am only 23 myself, to read into the Heysel disaster a bit more as it isn’t covered widely by the media at all and you don’t really hear about it until that day in May arrives. I found this article very informative and brilliantly written, as well as the comments (apart from that last one)!
Thank you for writing this piece about like you say, such a taboo subject. I think more people need to read it!!
From ”The good people of Liverpool”, how could we ever express our sorrow for what we did @ Heysel ? And what good would it do ? Their are bad people in every city and all we can do is apologise. :(
Thank you for this article. I was not there, but have some strong memories of that evening. I was off school sick, but my best friend was allowed to come over and watch the game with me. I too recall seeing that ‘Reds Animals’ banner, and also seeing fans, apparently of both sides, hanging off the fencing at the front of the terraces, trying to pull it down.
For a long time, with so little other information, those images allowed me to let myself believe the poor fan behaviour was from both sides and the tragedy could just as easily have befallen Liverpool fans.
A few years ago I read a blog by a LFC fan who was present, and described with searing honesty the attitude among a section of fans (himself included), looking for revenge for the previous year, or just for a good fight. That burst my happy, complacent little bubble.
As everyone on this page acknowledges, it has remained a very uncomfortable topic to raise, so thanks again for this balanced and enlightening piece.
I was in Rome the year before, it was a very hostile journey, I remember the scene as we entered Rome of kids in a playground shouting abuse at us and hurling missiles at the coach. When we arrived myself and a mate got on a tram to the Vatican and was told by a Roma fan that if they won the game we would be invited to the biggest party party ever, if they lost he advised us to get of Rome quickly or we would be seriously hurt. After leaving the Vatican we went for a pint in a nearby bar, there appeared to be good banter with some Roma fans but then armed Police arrived and started pointing guns towards Liverpool fans, me and my mate gave it toes and hid in the bog inside the bar. After it went quiet we headed towards the ground only to be chased by a large mob throwing bottles and stones at us, luckily we bumped into older Liverpool fans who helped us to safety.
After the game we headed towards our coach, Roma fans were everywhere trying to pick off Liverpool supporters, I remember there was very little protection from the Police. We boarded the coach and there was glass everywhere as most of the windows had been smashed. The coach driver advised us to lie on top of each other in the isle to protect us from missiles being thrown through the broken windows as we left the city. Supporters told similar stories on the way home, some had been slashed on the arse and had spent time in hospital.
I had experienced some scary away days in the 80’s but not on this scale, I wasn’t arsed that we had won a European Cup, I just wanted to get home safe.
As was stated in this article Heysel was waiting to happen, it’s a pity the authorities did not learn from what happened in Rome and other previous games to put a strategy in place to prevent the inevitable.
after a particularly nasty derby with recriminations flying and trying to educate people to what happened, I found your article. Much kudos to you fair and balanced I wish more Liverpool fans would read it and not use the clubs sanitized version, believe the seeds for this disaster were sown the previous year.
I am a Chelsea fan who has been going to games for over 50 years now and I vividly remember the Liverpool chairman of the time, blaming Chelsea fans for causing the violence. This is the real reason why the lovable scallys are hated at Stamford Bridge. My brother-in-law is a loyal Liverpool fan who was at Heysel and even he admits that the charge by the Liverpool fans was as a direct result of the appalling treatment him and others received in Rome. To this day neither of us will attend a Chelsea v Liverpool match. He is still scarred by what he witnessed that night.
I have no words besides thank you. Remarkable piece.
Both Liverpool and Juventus as a mark of respect for the victims should do some
sort of ceremonial blessing, like a minutes silence.
As it is apologetic, on aniverserys.
The people that were found guilty of manslaughter do not represent the true values of Liverpool football club.
Well written spot on comments too
As a Chelsea season ticket holder for many years, I witnessed the Heysel disaster unfold in front of me on television. The fact is and still is, that the then Liverpool FC board blamed my club, along with West Ham and Millwall for the disaster at Heysel and to this day they have never issued an apology of any sort whatsoever. This was a blatant deflection of the truth and is the reason that most Chelsea fans despise Liverpool more than any other. Not one person arrested or charged came from the London area and why would they. Liverpool were resented by most other clubs during that period, because they had the massive financial advantage compared to any other European club. For almost 20 years they were totally financially boosted by Littlewoods Pools, which made it impossible for any other club in Europe to compete with them. The biased Liverpool loving media, ignore this fact of how they continually `bought` their success over two decades.
While in relation to Heysel, if any other club had been responsible for the deaths of so many Juventus supporters, it would used as a stick to use against them at every opportunity, as opposed to just pretend it never happened. Liverpool are a great club, but their fans have always been a disgrace, we see it time and time again, they have no respect for any other club or its supporters and as we have all just seen after their first Premier league win in 30 years, nothing changes in the violence and destruction which was apparent in and around the City centre.
As you are a Chelsea fan, to say Liverpool “bought” their success, I think it’s case of the pot calling the kettle when Chelsea have been bankrolled by the Russians for a number of years. I could say Chelsea practically bought their champions League and Premier League successes. But both Liverpool and Chelsea worked hard to attract the backing in the first place. Both are great clubs. Yes it was wrong for Robinson to point the finger of blame towards fans of Chelsea with regards to Heysel, I can understand your anger at that. I think there needs to be a full disclosure and a written in depth report to help the football community understand the circumstances surrounding that awful night, and that’s not to excuse any of the LFC fans that were found responsible. The true supporters like myself are equally appalled as you are at what happened at Heysel, and any act of violence for that matter, and yes we’ve had a handful of idiots causing trouble which has let the club and it’s supporters down, like the recent celebration night with a handful of melon heads spoiling it in the city centre, I don’t recall any trouble when we won Ole Big Ears last season or when over 2,500 gathered to cheer the team after Istanbul. Unfortunately, all clubs have had their hooligan element over the years, and I feel to lump all of our fans together as a “disgrace” is unfair and uncalled for.
Sorry, with regards to the above comment it was more 250,000+ that lined the streets to welcome the team home, still no reports of any trouble though.
Clutching at straws there headhunter. To suggest Liverpool bought the title in the 70s and 80s is utter rubbish. Huge success at home and abroad allowed Liverpool to compete for top players. What you also forget is the fact that Liverpool had a tremendous knack of buying players when relevant unknowns and creating top class footballers. Hansen, Rush, NIcol, Whelan, Beglin to name a few cost minimal fees yet won numerous trophies. Man Utd and the likes of Notts Forest were the clubs that spent huge amounts.
As for Heysel, if you look at the footage barely a fight took place. No wonder John Smith was horrified and had difficulty believing a set of fans with no history of hooliganism could be partly responsible. Prior to Heysel the violence that season was at Millwall, Chelsea, West Ham and Leeds. Liverpool or my club Everton did not get a mention by the press/television when it came to the antics of numerous hooligan “firms”
@ Schwarzie Long, if you were in a taxi, why would you be asking for directions. Something fishy about your story.
What a terrible night for football regardless of who you support or who you blame. A memorial and a greater openness about the disaster is needed.
Liverpool (21-22) are currently hopeful of a memorable season and may win 3 or 4 major trophies. Perhaps, I thought, a befitting gesture could be made by the club to recognise and reflect this disaster.
I then read that any trophy parade is planned for …. 29th May.
Incredible insensitivity from the club (and the parade’s organisers).
It seems the lessons have not been learnt by the club.
rip the 39 and the 96