Heysel: Football’s Darkest Hour

Saturday will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Heysel Stadium disaster. Unlike some of the other tragedies that have struck football, like Bradford, Ibrox, Hillsborough, and Luzhniki, the historical legacy of the Heysel tragedy remains the subject of debate. While the other incidents mentioned involved inadequate facilities, negligent policing, and blameless fans, the hooliganism that caused the deaths of 39 people in Brussels keeps an element of controversy alive. I personally think that, after twenty five years, it’s totally unacceptable for the parties involved in Heysel to continually evade responsibility for what happened.

It’s obviously difficult to write about Heysel, especially as a detached observer looking back at the event. There is a mountain of conflicting anecdotal accounts, though, thankfully, some excellent work has been produced over the years that has sorted out the likely from the dubious. Mainly, it’s difficult to write anything about Heysel without appearing to point fingers. For convenience’s sake, the fans are referred to as a general group, as they would normally be, but it’s certainly not my intention to claim, for instance, that every Liverpool fan, no matter how far they were from Brussels on May 29, 1985, needs to have a personal sense of guilt. The conclusions drawn are certainly my own opinion on the matter.

The basic facts have never really been up for debate. The 1985 European Cup Final was held in Brussel’s decrepit Heysel Stadium. The Liverpool end of the stadium contained a section (block Z) designated for neutral fans. In practice, quite a few Juventus fans, many of them casual, middle class, and middle aged fans who were merely taking the opportunity to be present for a big occasion, rather than ultras, were able to acquire tickets from locals, and ended up in this section, which was only separated from Liverpool fans by a feeble, chicken wire fence. After antagonism between segments of the two sets of fans, Liverpool fans breached the wire fencing and charged into the neutral section. Fans uninvolved in the original antagonism fled the onrushing violence, and attempted to leave the section by climbing over a concrete retaining wall. The wall collapsed under the weight of the fans, injuring nearly 500 and killing 39.

From there things get fairly muddled. Because the crumbling stadium (the pre-kickoff antagonism involved the two groups of fans hurling missiles at each other; these missiles were pieces of the stadium itself), woeful organization, and inadequate policing all contributed to the disaster, there appears to be an ongoing contest between UEFA and Liverpool supporters to cast the other as the main villain of the piece.

For their part, UEFA concluded that the Liverpool fans were solely to blame for the loss of life. The organizational failures shouldn’t be ignored. Even though, in an ideal world, it would be possible for fans at a major football match to comingle, as they do in other sports, that obviously isn’t the case. If the European Cup Final had been organized by people with little or no prior knowledge of football and the attendant culture, the lax preparations might be chalked up to inexperience and naivety. That the main governing body of the sport in Europe was responsible for the conditions surrounding the tragedy could be considered grossly negligent. The ‘on the other hand’ of this situation is that planning for a riot to occur might have been considered a stretch even for veterans of the game.

I am personally inclined to side with the ‘on the other hand’ perspective on this issue. To put such a great deal of focus on the condition of the stadium does, to some extent, ignore the fact that Heysel was hardly the only stadium in Europe that could be considered a dump. Lots of matches are played in substandard stadiums and grounds without a major loss of life taking place. If you remove the charge through block Z from the equation, Heysel becomes a crappy venue that UEFA should have been embarrassed to have their biggest match of the season at, but not a death trap waiting to happen, like Bradford or Hillsborough.

While UEFA simply laid the entirety of the blame at the feet of Liverpool supporters, the attempts by some Liverpool fans to shift blame for what happened are more varied. Obviously, insisting that the conditions were the main cause is the same approach that UEFA took, with a different conclusion. Many of the other excuses are ‘yes, but’ qualifiers.

One factor often cited is the previous year’s European Cup Final in Rome. After Liverpool defeated Roma in a penalty shoot out, Liverpool fans were apparently attacked by some of Roma’s ultras upon leaving the stadium. The memory of the previous year’s violence supposedly contributed to some Liverpool fans taking a more ‘guarded’ approach to the entirely different set of Italian fans. I have never understood why this could remotely serve as an excuse when it seems closer to an admission. Unless the exact same individuals that attacked Liverpool fans in Rome were present in Brussels, they were two completely unrelated things. By applying some vague notions of vigilance or vengeance to the Juventus fans, simply because they also happened to be Italian, all this attitude did was make an already confrontational traveling fan culture even more hostile.

Another popular claim is that the Liverpool supporters were infiltrated by ‘cockneys,’ National Front attached Chelsea, Millwall, and West Ham supporters, and the infiltrators were responsible for the actual violence. I believe this theory is mostly based on the fact that organized hooligan firms, like the Chelsea Headhunters for example, weren’t attached to football in Liverpool. As far as I know, there has never been any serious evidence in support of this theory. It might easily be waved away as desperation, except that it has proved quite a persistent myth, and, as Dave Hill wrote in Out of His Skin, the club itself offered this theory as an explanation of what happened.

A more plausible qualifier in the Liverpool fan’s defense is that English hooliganism was at its apex during this era, and that any other English club could have just as easily caused this disaster. Nick Hornby, in Fever Pitch, wholly agreed with this sentiment. Given the propensity of other English fans to single Liverpool out, especially in the form of partisan banter, I think this is a fair objection to the treatment of the tragedy. In 1985, the atmosphere surrounding English football was at its most poisonous and violent (the Kenilworth Road riot, which caused Luton Town to completely ban away fans for a number of years, also took place during 84-85), and Liverpool were hardly the first English club to cause trouble on the continent. Just a couple of other notable examples: Leeds were banned from European competition after their fans rioted after their 1975 European Cup Final defeat to Bayern Munich, and during the 70s and 80s Manchester United’s Red Army routinely rampaged through whatever city was unfortunate enough to host them. So yes, the implication that Heysel was a unique set of circumstances caused by Liverpool fans, rather than Heysel was the inevitable consequence of an unchecked culture of violence is an unfair view to take. Of course, this does nothing to alter the fact that Liverpool was the club in Belgium and their fans were responsible for the violence on that particular night.

Ultimately, Liverpool as a club has gotten better over the years about accepting blame. The club actually unveiled a permanent memorial to the victims outside of Anfield earlier this week. The fans, as you would expect when discussing any large and varied group of people, tend to offer mixed views. Though there appears to be an outspoken minority who persist with excuses or denials, it seems that many fans are realistic and frank about Heysel. I think Brian Glanville summed up the post-Heysel recriminations and shame ideally when he pointed out that they weren’t taking place because a group of hooligans ran amok, but because 39 people died for no reason.

The match was, after an 85 minute delay, played. The decision to go ahead with the match has been attributed to the prevention of further violence. During the delay, Juventus ultras from the other end of the ground attempted to invade the Liverpool section and were beaten back by the Belgian police. It was during this wave of disorder that the infamous Juventus fan with a gun, which turned out to be a starter pistol, appeared.

Players from Liverpool and Juventus have offered differing personal accounts over the years of how aware they were that there had been violence and deaths. Kenny Dalglish and Paolo Rossi, for instance, have pled ignorance, while Juventus defender Antonio Cabrini, according to John Foot in his history of Italian football, told a reporter that ‘we knew everything.’ Michel Platini scored the only goal of the game for Juventus with a penalty. His subsequent celebrations have always seemed positively surreal to me.

It was precisely these celebrations that provided Juventus’ moment of shame for Heysel. At the time, Juventus had failed in their previous European Cup Final attempts, so the first victory was supposed to be a monumental night for the club. It would appear that the deaths, in some way, proved to be as much as a party spoiling inconvenience as a tragedy for Juventus. Though most of the post match celebrations were done off to the side or in the dressing room, Juventus did return to the pitch for a lap of honor with the European Cup, and used the ‘blood of our fans’ to justify it after the fact, a move that has been universally criticized, especially by the bereaved families. John Foot also notes that there were spontaneous outpourings of celebration by Juventus fans all over Italy, as if the match had been played and won under normal circumstances.

In the aftermath of Heysel, English clubs were voluntarily withdrawn from 1985-86 European competition. They were banned for five seasons, with an additional one year ban for Liverpool by UEFA.

The aftermath in England was ultimately worse for football and its fans than the ban from European competition. From an administrative point of view, Heysel was a cry for serious reform to the way people watched football. As to be expected with the Thatcher government, the reaction to Heysel was thoroughly reactionary. A government which already viewed the sport in the dimmest light possible, to the point of declaring supporters part of ‘the enemy within’ was able to justify, if not confirm, its worst prejudices, namely that to have any interest in football was enough to brand one was a dangerous lunatic that needed to be literally penned in and possibly beat up. The idea that the appalling conditions and subhuman treatment of football supporters, besides posing a danger to supporters, actually helped to normalize violence, whether it was posed by fans or the government’s own inquires into the disaster, became a very small voice in the background. It would take the horror in Sheffield four years later before a real program of meaningful reform would be undertaken.

(It would have been nearly impossible for me to write with any assurance about what happened at Heysel without the invaluable prior work done on the subject.)

Calcio by John Foot
Out of His Skin by Dave Hill
Fever Fitch by Nick Hornby
When Saturday Comes: The Half Decent Football Book

Category: Europe, Other