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full so I got there early to get a decent spot. They didn’t usually have big screens back then. The game was being played at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels and about an hour before kick-off a disturbance had begun in one end of the ground when some Liverpool fans charged Juventus fans across a neutral area. The trouble brewed for a good while and culminated in a crush against a dividing wall which eventually collapsed in places. Thirty-nine people, nearly all Italians, died and around six hundred were injured. In the pub we could see the melee but it wasn’t clear what was going on but news gradually came across that there’d been fatalities.
The local police seemed to have really lost the plot and an incident that stays in my mind was when two dazed Juventus fans – they were all very well dressed I recall – managed to get out of the terrace and onto the track around the pitch. Instead of assisting them, two baton-wielding cops hesitated for a while before smacking them both over the head as if this would somehow alleviate the situation. The picture got worse and worse but the authorities decided to let the game go ahead. As I was out for the evening I stayed till the end but in effect it was a non-match with both sides looking decidedly lacklustre and it was ‘won’ by Juventus with a dodgy penalty that no one seemed committed enough to dispute. The Liverpool fans received the blame for the disaster but the area between the fans was only sparsely policed. It also turned out that the stadium was in a very bad condition and shouldn’t have been used for hosting such a big crowd. So, for the second time in a few weeks a large number
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