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The Independent
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Forty years on from Heysel: The lessons football still needs to learn
The Heysel disaster embodied what were the darkest days of football. Four decades on, there are still lessons to be learned. The catastrophe took place on the game's biggest stage: the 1985 European Cup final, contested between Liverpool and Juventus. On that tragic day in Brussels, 39 fans lost their lives while 600 were left injured after fans were crushed against a wall that collapsed. Abject failures in crowd management and poor stadium design were at the heart of the disaster, as they were for the calamities of Hillsborough and the Valley Parade fire that same decade. Among the three, Heysel is somewhat the forgotten tragedy, despite its seismic short and long-term impact. There was a widespread perception that Liverpool fans were solely responsible, with the crush culminating from crowd disorder sparked by Reds supporters crossing a fence separating them and a neutral stand which contained mostly Juventus fans. Fourteen were later found guilty of manslaughter and jailed. It resulted in English clubs being banned from Europe for five years and fuelled a reputation of English hooliganism that still stands to this day on the continent. Four years later at Hillsborough, where poor crowd management once again devolved into disaster, costing the lives of 97, the fans were blamed once more, almost habitually given the precedent of Heysel. However, the systemic causes of these incidents were yet to be addressed - a problem in fan safety that was being brushed over by simply laying blame at the feet of 'unruly' supporters. After first Heysel and then Hillsborough, learning finally began to flow from catastrophe. 'You get a major disaster like Hillsborough or Bradford, and off the back of that, inquiries get developed - Taylor or Popplewell, for example - and those inquiries then highlight the broader system failure,' said Professor Clifford Stott of Keele University, a specialist in crowds and policing and the co-author of the independent report that delved into the chaotic scenes at the 2022 Champions League final in Paris. 'It was very much about unsafe stadia. Those [inquiries] have created an environment where stadium safety has advanced exponentially over the last 40 odd years.' Post-Heysel, there was a recognition that the failings of the authorities and crumbling state of the Heysel stadium were also key factors at play. However, popular understandings continued to point the finger solely at fans - with hooliganism the far more eye-catching topic to both the public and the media. As such, it was crucial that the narrative moved away from simply citing hooliganism as the overarching cause for such tragedies. 'It is completely useless as a narrative to help us to understand the nature of the problem,' Stott adds. 'What we're dealing with isn't hooligans, it's crowd management, crowd dynamics and crowd psychology.' And as the powers at be finally addressed the core issues, what evolved in the decades after were undeniable improvements in fan safety protocols - which were primarily represented in the Saint-Denis Convention. Adopted by the Council of Europe in 2016 before being officially ratified by the UK government seven years later, this effectively set the framework for how major sporting events should be managed. On paper, this was the solution to years of toil over how to make football universally safe, preventing any future disaster or case of crowd mismanagement. A continent-wide legal instrument, it set out to ensure an integrated, multi-agency approach to sporting events that prevents security from ever overruling safety and service, with no single stakeholder - such as the police - able to address an issue by itself. However, this requirement of international police co-operation for each and every event that goes beyond country lines was - and still is - aspirational, idealistic and massively difficult to implement. 'The ideal situation is the policy agreements that were reached in 2016, and they're still not being realised,' Stott said. And as we've seen across the past few years, there have been numerous shortcomings that have not only led to fan safety being put at serious risk, but also the narrative to regress back to blaming supporters. The 2022 Champions League final was the key case failing, which demonstrated that 37 years on from Heysel, the same problems still existed. Poor communication between stakeholders - something that the Saint-Denis Convention acts to weed out - was rife as the Paris police started acting by themselves, leading to Liverpool supporters being funelled into a bottleneck towards an entrance at the Stade de France that was not fit for purpose. Crowds inevitably begun to overwhelm the police as a result, culminating in fans being tear gassed. Ticketless supporters were then blamed for the ordeal by French authorities. 'There was a focus on public order at the expense of public safety,' Stott said, whose independent report found fans were not responsible for crowd problems in Paris. 'There were a lot of parallels between what went wrong at Heysel and what went wrong in Paris. So despite all of that policy development and learning, ironically, we find ourselves in 2022 in a situation that wasn't that distant from 1985.' Paris 2022 was hardly an anomaly, especially in regard to the prioritisation of order over safety, or indeed the blaming of fans. Just this week, unfounded social media speculation over the Liverpool parade crash spiralled out of control, with some baselessly accusing the fans of enraging the driver who ploughed into the crowd, injuring 79. In Wroclaw ahead of the Europa Conference League final, Chelsea fans were blasted with a water cannon by police after disorder broke out. And earlier this season, ahead of Manchester United's Europa League quarter-final first leg with Lyon, the French police once again resorted to tear gas, claiming it was 'proportionate' to restore calm. Of course, these incidents of rogue, excessive policing do not adhere to the Saint-Denis Convention. Part of the problem remains the reputation around English supporters. After all, many of the key case studies detailing recent failings of the Saint-Denis Convention involve Premier League clubs. A stereotype of dangerous hooligans that come across the channel - something that was hugely exacerbated by the events of Heysel - still exists among fans and foreign police. This is despite, as Stott insists, football culture having vastly changed in this country: 'We don't really have the risk groups operating in the way they did in the past - the legislation has gone a long way to removing that threat.' However, there is still a reflex among European states to load up increased force to prepare for the arrival of English fans, which often devolves into a harsh, unjustified and overblown police response which puts supporters at risk. 'The key problem in the European context is risk assessment,' Stott adds. 'That risk assessment is often not very sophisticated. Say you've got a host police force in somewhere like Italy, Greece or Spain. They'll say: 'Are these fans English?' If the answer is yes, they'd see it as a high risk, and then throw loads of policing resources around it that weren't necessary. The English fans travelling weren't actually going there for disorder, but they get treated as if they were. That dynamic would actually precipitate disorder.' This does not reflect the regulated, 'one approach for all' ideal that the Saint-Denis Convention, a ratified piece of legislation that is meant to tick all the boxes when it comes to fan safety, sets out. That's because at the end of the day, seven years on from the agreement, 'aspirational' is still the way the convention is described. 'The policy is there, everybody knows that policy is the way to go,' Stott asserted. 'The problem is delivery - not in its entirety because many events do deliver that. The problem is you get is these sporadic events where that policy isn't adhere to, and there doesn't appear to be any kind of regulatory mechanism to say if you don't deliver, then what's the consequence? If there's no consequence, then these deviations are just going to continue to happen.' For Stott, a huge step towards making the Saint-Denis Convention the norm regards the involvement and control of Uefa. While he notes that the governing body's adoption of the agreement has been the 'driving force' in 'shifting the agenda', the situation could be vastly improved if Uefa took a more hands-on approach to regulating match policing in its competitions. 'Uefa doesn't really control policing,' he said. 'Policing is controlled by the nation states, and those police forces and nation states will at times completely vary away from that agreement. And this is where we have argued, certainly in our report around the handling of the Champions League final in Paris, that Uefa should take more responsibility and more control over the policing of their events. It's their failure to do that which is one of the primary issues that needs to be confronted. 'It's really their failure to oversee the delivery of the safety and security operations in these locations that lies at the heart of the problem. If they took a more proactive role in overseeing that these events were going to be policed in line with these agreements, then we would have safer events. That's what went wrong in Paris, and it continues to go wrong. 'When Manchester United fans ended up getting tear gassed again, Uefa could have stepped into the fray and said 'if this continues to happen in France, your teams aren't going into the Champions League anymore'. It could take this much more assertive position, but it doesn't. We really need a much stronger and more robust regulatory framework to ensure more systematic and coherent delivery of the existing policy.' Football is obviously in a better place than it was 40 years ago. Heysel was one of a handful of tragedies that shook the game and forced change to be made. And while legislation proves that, we are still seeing shortfalls in practice when it comes to the policing of events, especially on the international stage. There is still vast work to be done to ensure the safety of travelling supporters, preventing disorder from once again unravelling into disaster.
New York Times
6 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Juventus open new memorial to mark 40 years since Heysel Stadium disaster
Juventus have opened a new memorial to the victims of the Heysel Stadium disaster, 40 years after 39 people died following clashes between supporters at the ground in Brussels. The memorial was designed by Italian artist Luca Vitone and is located on the Strada della Continassa, near Juventus' Allianz Stadium and training centre in Turin. Advertisement The Heysel Stadium disaster happened before the 1985 European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool, when 39 people — 32 Italians, four Belgians, two Frenchmen and one Northern Irishman — died after a wall that they had been pushed up against collapsed as they were trying to escape clashes between the two sets of supporters that had begun in the stands. Fourteen fans served prison sentences in Belgium for their actions, the secretary general of the Belgian FA received a six-month prison sentence for mistakes made in ticket arrangement, and UEFA was found civilly liable in 1990 and later made jointly responsible for incidents occurring at events it organises. The memorial, which is situated in what was a 2,000m squared green space, is the culmination of a project launched by Juventus and the late art critic and fan of the club, Luca Beatrice. The garden features a ramp that spirals up into the sky. At the top of the LED-illuminated walkway is a telescope with inverted lenses, which draw the viewer's gaze toward the horizon. Verso Altrove, a work by artist Vitone, is supposed to take you somewhere else — not away from Heysel but to a place of contemplation and reflection. 40 anni fa, la tragedia dell'Heysel. — JuventusFC (@juventusfc) May 29, 2025 A Ginkgo biloba has been planted to provide more than just shade from the heat on warm summer days. 'Symbolically, it's a very important tree,' Vitone told The Athletic. 'It was one of the few living things that survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945. Already a symbol of resistance, longevity and perseverance in life, it should be a lesson to us all on how to live in this world. It's an ancient tree, a living fossil, a symbol of tenacity and memory, which is considered one of the most positive representations of life in the Far East.' Vitone admits such a delicate project wasn't easy to approach. He felt a great responsibility and said that 'we'll only know if we've done something significant or not in the coming months and years'. Advertisement 'Now, with Verso Altrove, a new memorial has been added to the club's commitment to cherishing this remembrance, a hymn of life and the human capacity to transform suffering into a renewed sense of hope,' a Juventus statement read on Thursday.
Associated Press
6 days ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
Heysel remembered: A look at the 1985 stadium disaster and how soccer recovered
On May 29, 1985, 39 people went to the biggest club game in soccer and never returned home. Heysel Stadium in Brussels was staging the European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool exactly 40 years ago. Crowd disorder culminated in a surge by Liverpool fans into an adjacent stand containing mostly Juventus supporters. In the ensuing chaos, some were trampled or suffocated to death as they tried to flee and others died when a retaining wall collapsed. A total of 39 people — 32 from Italy, four from Belgium, two from France and one from Northern Ireland — died and around 600 were injured in events that took place in real time on international television. On the 40th anniversary of the Heysel disaster, here's a look at what exactly happened and the consequences of one of soccer's darkest days. The background English soccer was in a bad place in the mid-1980s, with racism and hooliganism damaging the reputation of fans in the game's birthplace. Just two weeks before Heysel, a 15-year-old boy died during fighting at a game between Birmingham and Leeds, and a fire that ripped through a wooden stand at Bradford killed 56 people. Two months earlier, some of the worst ever rioting occurred at an FA Cup game between Luton and Millwall. 'A slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people' was how an editorial by The Sunday Times summed up the state of English soccer ahead of Heysel. Liverpool fans might therefore have been viewed with suspicion as they poured into Brussels for the match against Juventus, but they were also suspicious themselves. A year earlier, at the 1984 European Cup final in Rome, Liverpool supporters were attacked by their Roma counterparts after the game. 'It wasn't a case of revenge,' Tony Evans, a Liverpool fan who was at Heysel at age 24, told The Associated Press, 'but rather no ultra will ever do this to me again.' Adding to the potential for catastrophe at the 1985 final was the condition of Heysel, a 55,000-capacity structure with outdated standing-room only stands, flimsy chicken-wire fences and crumbling walls inside and outside the stadium. There were too few police officers present, and organizers arranged for there to be a section for 'neutral' fans beside one of the two stands holding Liverpool supporters at one end of the ground. Many Juve fans ended up getting tickets in the 'neutral' section — and that's where the tragedy occurred. 'People were out of control' Evans attended the match with family and friends and remembers the level of drunkenness among Liverpool fans was unlike anything he'd seen. 'People were out of control everywhere,' he told the AP. 'When you got to the ground, people were kicking holes in the wall to climb in. By then, the atmosphere had deteriorated and there were wild rumors going round that Liverpool fans had been stabbed and one had been hung.' Evans, who has written about Heysel in two books, 'Far Foreign Land' and 'Two Tribes,' recalls the Liverpool section being so overcrowded that fans were already spilling through a collapsed barrier into the 'neutral' section. Fans were seen throwing beer cans and chunks of concrete torn from the stands. What ultimately set off a fatal surge by Liverpool fans, Evans said, was flares being set off. 'That seemed to spark a huge panic, a charge down the front,' he said. Those fleeing the panic were crushed in the corner of the neutral section next to an old wall, which collapsed. Despite the chaos, organizers decided the final should be played, believing it would prevent further disorder between fans outside the stadium. Juventus won 1-0. The aftermath Some 26 Liverpool fans were arrested and charged with manslaughter, 14 of whom were found guilty and given three-year prison sentences. Suspended prison sentences were handed to a Belgian Football Association official and a police chief. Heysel never hosted another major game. It was torn down in 1994 and replaced with King Baudouin Stadium. In terms of sporting sanctions, English clubs were banned from playing in European competition for five years. Liverpool received an indefinite suspension that ultimately lasted for six years. Long-term consequences Heysel was 'the low point for the English game' that was hated by the British government 'for its internationally shaming events,' according to John Williams, an expert in the sociology of football at the University of Leicester. Fans voted with their feet, with crowds in the English league in the 1985-86 season plummeting to around 16 million — a post-war low — when they had once been two and a half times that, Williams said. Yet Williams said Heysel started the process of reflection among English soccer fans that something needed to change. Within a decade — and turbo-charged by another stadium tragedy when Liverpool fans were crushed at an FA Cup match at Hillsborough, leading to the death of 97 people — the English game would have all-seater stadiums, CCTV, stronger powers for the police, an alcohol ban inside grounds, a national organization of fans, the Premier League and be the envy of the rest of Europe. 'Ironically, in many ways it was England that benefitted most from Heysel in the long run, more than for the Italians and others in Europe,' Williams said. He referred to what authorities abroad call the 'English miracle — the managing of fans competently with stewards rather than police and the generally very low levels of disorder in new elite modern stadia.' For Evans, fans took a deep breath and stepped away from 'the abyss.' 'It was a natural development by the people who watched the game and realized if this sort of behavior that had characterized the first half of the 1980s continued, football would be dead within a decade,' Evans said. 'Everyone says Hillsborough was the determining factor, but the reality is the tides of history had changed four years before.' A day of remembrance Liverpool and Juventus were unveiling memorials on Thursday in honor of the Heysel victims to mark the 40th anniversary. For Liverpool, the occasion would be even more poignant coming just days after a minivan plowed into dozens of fans during the team's latest Premier League victory parade. Liverpool said its newly designed memorial at Anfield will feature 'two scarves knotted together and gently tied — symbolizing the unity and solidarity between the two clubs and the bond formed through shared grief and mutual respect in the aftermath of the disaster.' It will include the names of the 39 people who died. Juventus ' memorial will be near its stadium and training complex. ___ AP soccer:
BBC News
6 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Liverpool mayor: Heysel disaster leaves 'indelible stain' on city
The mayor of the Liverpool City Region has spoken of the importance of remembering the causes of the Heysel stadium disaster 40 years on. Steve Rotheram was at the match on 29 May 1985 when 39 people died before the European Cup Final in Brussels. A group of Liverpool fans at Heysel Stadium had charged towards a section housing mostly Juventus supporters, resulting in the collapse of a Rotheram, who was in another part of the stadium at the time, said "for our city it's an indelible stain." All English clubs were banned from European competitions for five years after the disaster, which alongside those who died saw 600 people injured when the wall collapsed on blame for Heysel was initially laid entirely on Liverpool fans, and 14 were later found guilty of manslaughter and investigation did find some culpability lay with the Belgian authorities, and the crumbling state of Heysel Stadium. Liverpool FC have sent a delegation to Turin for a memorial service, which the mayor welcomed. Mr Rotheram said: "I think it's really important for the club and the people of our city to be represented at the memorial service."And for everyone to remember how the event that caused the loss of life was allowed to develop by really poor policing, and a terrible stadium, and lots of problems with organisation. "But also the part that Liverpool fans played in that, and the fact that some of those people were later jailed for the part they played in that."A new memorial plaque was unveiled by Liverpool FC in recent days, the location of which has not yet been announced. It will replace the existing memorial plaque in the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand. Jonathan Bamber, Liverpool's chief legal and external affairs officer, said the club "wanted to take the opportunity to provide something more meaningful"."It's always a difficult topic for us as a football club but it's also something that we don't want to shy away from," he said."Hopefully it's a fitting and lasting tribute to those who lost their lives." 'Darkest nights' Mark Platt, museum curator and club historian, was initially planning to travel to the game with his father but he ended up watching it on the television instead."It was a nightmare. I was only 12 years of age at the time," he said."You couldn't really believe what was happening. You couldn't comprehend what you were seeing."He added the tragedy was "one of the darkest nights in the club's history" but said "40 years on, we've never forgotten Heysel".Mr Platt said the new memorial, which will feature two scarves knotted together, would be "more visible".Keith Watson, who designed the memorial, said it was a "simple design" based on their research."On the terraces, we saw two scarves – one from Juventus and one from Liverpool," he said."That gave us the idea to pull the design together as 'forever bound' to signify the unity, the collaboration, the reconciliation that has taken place between the two clubs." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
This small, insignificant memorial is a disgrace and an insult to the fans who lost their lives at Heysel, writes IAN HERBERT
The security guard at the entrance to what was once the Heysel Stadium refuses to let me through to the spot which commemorates the death of 39 football fans. It's after finding an open gate elsewhere I reach the memorial stone which is a disgrace and an insult to their memory. Blink and you'd miss the small, insignificant granite plaque affixed to one of the stadium's vast, red-brick exterior walls, where the names of those who were crushed to death here in the Heysel Disaster, 40 years ago on Thursday, are being weathered away. Roberto Lorentini, a young doctor, died trying to save a child's life. Andrea Casula, aged 11, died a few yards from the place where his father Giovanni's body was found. Northern Irishman Patrick Radcliffe, an archivist working for the European Economic Community in Brussels, died having simply wanted to experience a big event in the city. These and others were supposed to have been remembered in posterity at the place where they lost their lives. There was a ceremony to inaugurate the plaque and an adjacent commemorative 'light sculpture' 20 years ago. Turns out no one in Heysel could be bothered to notice that the paint used to list the victims is peeling off. This would not have surprised Roberto Lorentini's father, Otello. He, more than anyone, knew all about the rank incompetence and disgraceful buck-passing of the Belgian authorities and UEFA after the disaster of May 29, 1985. He worked tirelessly, amid his own grief, to hold them to account for what befell fans in Heysel's infamous Z Section, where he arrived with his son that night. The banners those Italian fans draped over the stadium crush barriers before all hell let loose bore messages such as Mamma sono qui! ('Mum, I'm here!'). They imagined their mothers being proud they had completed the 10-hour road trip north for the European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool. Instead, their families back in Piedmont stood transfixed before TV sets, looking for a sign in the transmission that their loved ones were not caught up in the crush which claimed the lives of 32 Italians, four Belgians, two French and Northern Irishman Radcliffe. The German broadcaster ZDF terminated their transmission out of respect before the decision was taken — astonishing and abysmal in hindsight — that the final would still be played that very night: a 9.40pm kick-off, with the deaths so quickly put out of mind that the noise of the crowd could be heard from the little Brussels hospital where many of the bereaved had congregated. The tragedy was a very awkward truth for Liverpool FC for years and an indelible stain on the club's reputation. The fine new Heysel memorial at Anfield, which Liverpool announced last week, is welcome, though for many years the club struggled to take responsibility. Sir John Smith, then chairman, wrongly claimed two National Front members had been responsible, later telling a Merseyside Police investigator he was misquoted. A list of organisations who made payments to a fund for the grieving families, listed in Italian journalist Francesco Caremani's devastating book Heysel. The Truth, included the Merseyside local authority, Merseyside Police and the Walton police station in Liverpool. Not the football club. But in the eyes of Otello Lorentini and many others, the Belgian authorities were the despicable ones in the aftermath, treating grieving families in a way for which no word can do justice. They were the ones responsible for the bodies of fans allegedly being mixed up at a makeshift mortuary. Belgian bureaucrats claimed the Italians were to blame for rushing their mortuary teams. The families of some of the injured were charged hospital fees and transport fees to reach the dead, later reimbursed. There was a flagrant wish in Belgium to airbrush the disaster from history. Caremani relates the story of how Juventus fan Carla Gonnelli, rescued by an English supporter after her father had died in front of her, went to Brussels to meet the man who had saved her life, on the first anniversary of the tragedy. The Belgian authorities refused to allow the English press into the stadium to capture the meeting. 'They tried to leave it all behind,' Lorentini, who passed away in 2014, said of UEFA and the Belgian authorities, a year after the disaster. 'But we will not accept that this tragedy is ascribed to Liverpool fans only. Our rage stems from the fact there is a general lack of steps taken against the violence.' UEFA and their egregious then president Jacques Georges denied any responsibility, despite pocketing 83 per cent of total match revenues and making the catastrophic decision to stage the final in a crumbling, 55-year-old stadium which was condemned in the early 1980s for failing to meet modern safety standards. Safety was placed in the hands of the grossly incompetent Belgian authorities. Local police had supposedly flown to England to 'study hooliganism' in advance, yet even Liverpool fans were surprised by the availability of strong Belgian beer from 5pm that evening. It significantly impacted what was to follow. A group of 100 Liverpool fans were free to charge through the Z Section because the line of police officers positioned there was so thin. The batteries failed on their walkie-talkies. There was no communication with the stadium control centre. More than 20 officers had left the terrace to investigate the theft of a cash till from a hot-dog vendor. The official inquiry by a leading Belgian judge found the local police chief was 'always where he shouldn't have been'. When UEFA general secretary Hans Bangerter was fined and given a three-month suspended prison sentence, the governing body appealed the verdict in a fight to avoid liability, and lost. The Belgian football authorities challenged their own convictions in an attempt to avoid paying compensation. They also lost. It was Otello Lorentini and the organisation he founded, The Association for the Families of Heysel Victims, who brought these individuals to justice. The despicable treatment of the Italian families has, to this day, never been fully appreciated. 'The Belgians did not have a clue and their policing of the event was pathetic,' former La Gazzetta dello Sport journalist Giancarlo Galavotti tells me. 'When the Liverpool mob surged the policemen ran down to pitch level, fearing for their own safety. I was in Rome's Stadio Olimpico for the Roma-Liverpool final the year before and something similar was about to happen just before kick-off. But the Italian Carabinieri military police in riot gear quickly ran up the dividing line forming a barrier and started to baton charge and push back the Liverpool mob, preventing their attack.' The blank looks my questions about the disaster elicited in the Heysel district last Friday evening demonstrated that the events of May 1985 do not form part of any collective memory in this place. 'Look around. You see this is a small, peaceful place. The game should never have been played here,' says 60-year-old Vincent Einhart, outside a shop called Market across the road from what became the King Baudouin Stadium, when the original Heysel was bulldozed and rebuilt. There is a bleak irony in finding an officious security officer barring my entry to a place where the pitiful lack of protection led to those 39 deaths, 40 years ago. I insist he must let me through. 'What if I had a tribute to lay at the plaque?' I ask him. 'Do you not know the significance? That it's been 40 years next week?' He makes a phone call, fiddles around in his little cabin and then re-emerges. 'No,' he says. 'This will require a written request. Not permitted. You cannot pass through.'
