By Samindra Kunti and Paul Nicholson
May 29 – The 30th anniversary of the Heysel disaster was remembered at the FIFA Congress today in Zurich by FIFA president Sepp Blatter, sitting two places away from UEFA president Michel Platini, who scored the winning goal on the fateful night that saw 39 Italians killed on the terraces of the Heysel stadium in Brussels, Belgium.
Blatter recognised the importance of the decision to play the match and prevent any further loss of life, before the Congess stood for a moments silence.
Separately, Platini spoke about the depth of emotion and horror surrounding that terrible night: “Thirty years ago, I played in a European Champion Clubs’ Cup final at the Heysel stadium in Brussels. And I continue to play in that final. It hasn’t left me, just like it hasn’t left anyone else who was there that night, and remains with all those who lost a loved one, for whom everything changed in a few terrible minutes.
“Thirty years later, I am the president of UEFA, the organisation that organised this match, and I am working every day with all my colleagues and friends at the national associations, leagues and clubs to ensure that we will never again experience the horror of such a night. We have been working unceasingly for the last 30 years to guarantee safety and security at sporting venues across Europe.
“As the 30th anniversary of that fateful night approaches, my thoughts are with the 39 people who lost their lives, and, of course, with their friends and families. I can only express my deepest sympathy and reiterate that I am still doing everything in my power to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.”
On May 29 1985 Brussels and Europe were set for a compelling European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. The previous season the Reds had won the European cup in Rome, defeating hosts AS Roma. They were poised to lift European silverware for a fifth time. Juventus were formidable too, with Marco Tardelli and Platini as hard-tacklers.
The 90 minutes should have gone down as an outstanding classic, but instead became a sinister stage for carnage and manslaughter. The Heysel stadium was outdated and as such not a suitable venue to host a European Cup final, but UEFA had ignored appeals from Liverpool and Juventus to chose another venue with both Madrid’s Bernabeu and Barcelona’s Camp Nou available.
The Heysel became a cauldron of skirmishes and hostility well before kickoff. Section Z, intended for neutral fans but packed with Italians who had obtained tickets through touts and agencies, was the danger zone. A thinly-policed buffer zone with chicken-wire fencing separated section Z from section X, designated to Liverpool fans. The English fans pelted Italian fans with beers cans and stones. Then they stormed and breached the neutral zone. The ‘Z fans’ panicked and stampeded into a perimeter wall. It collapsed, killing 39 fans and wounding 600 more.
UEFA, in an Avery Brundage moment, decided that the spectacle had to go on. Platini would score the match-winning goal from the penalty spot.
“I was responsible for the hospitality for the delegations of Liverpool and Juventus, so I was inside and didn’t see what happened,” says former Belgian FA chairman and current FIFA executive member Michel D’Hooghe. “During the introduction of the game I heard there were problems, that there were injured people. At the end I heard some people had died, but I had absolutely no idea at the moment itself of the vastness of the catastrophe. When I came home during the night and switched on the TV, I saw what had really happened. It’s incredible how you can be close to a dramatic situation, but not be conscious of it.”
“I was not sure that what I was seeing was reality,” recalls former UEFA president Lennart Johansson. “I couldn’t see the details [in the stadium] and had to study it afterwards. It was a catastrophe.”
“Some members of our executive committee wanted the English out of Europe,” explains Johansson. “I was of the opinion that we should work on it and that England had to be brought back to Europe.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Heysel disaster Liverpool withdrew from the UEFA Cup, the English FA banned its clubs from Europe for a season and UEFA announced that all English clubs would be banned indefinitely from Europe. Fourteen Liverpool fans were sentenced to three years of imprisonment for manslaughter.
Alan Courtois was also present as the tragedy unfolded. At the time he was a substitute public prosecutor. He wanted to ensure the victims’s civil rights were respected.
“There was a trial with the question of who was responsible,” explains the current first deputy of Brussels. “There was obviously the question of who the organizer was of the final – the FA, UEFA, the Belgian government, etc.? There were two trials, first instance and appeals. The Belgian FA was sentenced twice, and the police as well. The problem was that the damages of the victims were too high, it was impossible for the FA to pay. There was a huge discussion, which lasted more than four years, to settle the victims’s interests. At a certain point the Belgian government decided to pay a part.”
“UEFA always said that we award the organisation of the final to a location, but it’s the local FA who is the organizer,” continues Courtois, reflecting on the apparent lack of UEFA’s legal accountability. “Article 1 of UEFA’s regulations states that the concerned FA is responsible for the behavior of the fans. UEFA said ‘We are the organizers of a European cup final, but at the end of the day the local FA is responsible for the whole organization. That was the key of the case: UEFA was indirectly involved, but UEFA was not convicted directly.”
Courtois is adamant that a number of different facts contrived to the drama. “The Pope was visiting Belgium – nobody dares say it – and he left on Sunday and then the gendarmerie decided to change the order provisions,” says Courtois.
“They were never involved in the preparation meetings. The other element was the division of fans. It simply didn’t exist. Neutral fans got tickets for the Juventus section. Thirdly, the issue of arrest warrants. Today, an administrative arrest exists, it was used during EURO2000. That didn’t exist. There were people, who were completely drunk at Brussels’s main square a few hours before the game. If you add up all these elements, that was the Heysel disaster.”
Ultimately, Courtois recognizes the fatal part hooliganism played. “Some people arrived in Brussels just to fight and others wanted to celebrate football,” says Courtois. “I talk of English who intently came to fight and Italians who where at the stadium to celebrate football.”
The Heysel disaster sent shockwaves through England. “It isn’t that we’re numb,” said Margaret Thatcher. “We’re worse than numb.” The Daily Mirror considered it ‘the day football died.” Thatcher would prioritise tackling hooliganism with the same ferocity she showed in her battle against miners’ unions strikes. French philosophy professor Jean Baudrillard pointed partly to the Thatcher government’s war with the miners to explain the eruptions of violence at the stadium in his book ‘The Transparency of Evil.’ It was ‘interactive television’, in which the fans turned themselves into actors in a conditioned context.
In ‘Amongst the Tugs’ Bill Buford was less prosaic about hooliganism. Hooliganism appeals because of the ‘elation in transgression’ and a ‘ druggy high.’
In truth hooliganism had been rampant since the early 70’s in England and the Heysel disaster marked a savage culmination of a culture of violence. Nick Hornby summed up succinctly what led to the unfortunate death of 39 fans that night in Brussels in his book ‘Fever Pitch’ – “The kids’ stuff that proved murderous in Brussels belonged firmly and clearly on a continuum of apparently harmless but obviously threatening acts – violent chants, wanker signs, the whole, petty hardact works – in which a very large minority of fans had been indulging for nearly 20 years. In short Heysel was an organic part of a culture that many of us, myself included, had contributed towards.”
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