It was a truely shocking event and thanks Ben for posting about it.
I could have got a ticket for the game, but couldn't get to Belgium, then when I got a lift I didn't have a ticket so opted to stay at home.
On the night in question, I was in a pub in Liverpool with a friend. I remember Terry Wogan cutting over to the BBC Match Presenter who gave a pretty upbeat view of the game to come. As MOTD Live started the first words they issued was it was a dreadful night for football etc etc and quickly said that they thought there was at least one fatality. The pub I was in fell silent as people tried to work out what had happened.
The scenes of the charge across the terraces were replayed often and the horrific scenes of the crush victims.
Although it wasn't discussed much afterwards, mainly due to the horror of 39 people being killed, the TV cameras showed lots of violence happening at the Juventus end of the ground too with images of a guy appearing to hold a gun or maybe a starting pistol. The legacy had been at the previous years final in Rome (Roma vs Liverpool) plenty of Liverpool fans had been stabbed and attacked in mainly unreported violence and combined with a stadium that was falling to pieces, the combination of events led to Liverpool "fans" being involved in the fighting that led to the people being crushed and the wall collapsing.
For me, as a dyed in the wool Liverpool supporter, this event remains the most shameful day in my clubs history and while there were many mitigating circumstances, for me, nothing that has been said in the past changes the fact that if that group of people hadn't charged into the Italians, the deaths wouldn't have happened.
The following extracts are from Wiki which gives some perspective and history to Heysal and the aftermath.
Officially the entire blame for the incident was laid on the fans of Liverpool FC. On 30 May official UEFA observer Gunter Schneider said, "Only the English fans were responsible. Of that there is no doubt." UEFA, the organiser of the event, the owners of Heysel Stadium and the Belgian police were investigated for culpability. After an 18-month investigation, the dossier of top Belgian judge Marina Coppieters was finally published. It concluded that blame should not rest solely with the English fans, and that some culpability lay with the police and authorities. Several top officials were incriminated by some of the dossier’s findings, including police captain Johan Mahieu, who had been in charge of security on 29 May 1985 and was now charged with involuntary manslaughter.
There were 27 arrests on suspicion of manslaughter – the only extraditable offence applicable to events at Heysel. Most of these people had previous convictions for football-related violence. In 1989, after a five-month trial in Belgium, fourteen fans were given three-year sentences for involuntary manslaughter
Juventus and Liverpool were drawn together in the quarter-finals of the 2005 Champions League, their first meeting since Heysel. Before the first leg at Anfield, Liverpool fans held up placards to form a banner saying "amicizia" ("friendship" in Italian). Some Juventus fans applauded the gesture, though a significant number chose to turn their backs on it. In the return leg in Turin, Juventus fans displayed banners reading Easy to speak, difficult to pardon: murders and 15-4-89. Sheffield. God exists, the latter a reference to the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed in a crush. A number of Liverpool fans were attacked in the city by Juventus ultras.
On Wednesday 26 May 2010, a permanent plaque was unveiled on the Centenary Stand at Anfield to honour the Juventus fans who died 25 years earlier. |
