” Turnstiles (“turnstiles”), “ bottleneck effect » (« bottleneck »): these are two expressions among others that very many Liverpool supporters believed that they would never again, but never again, have to hear when talking about a football match. We know, since the planetary fiasco of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, in Paris, on Saturday May 28, that the memory of the Hillsborough tragedy, 95 dead, on April 15, 1989, was spontaneously revived by the incompetence and disorganization of the people in charge of the smooth running of an event, watched from the four corners of the globe.
On April 15, 1989, on the neutral ground of Sheffield, two of the biggest clubs of the 1980s were to meet in the Cup: Liverpool FC against Nottingham Forrest, draining dozens of supporters in the city of South Yorkshire. Remember that on May 29, 1985, there was the Heysel tragedy in Brussels, killing 39 people and where Liverpool supporters were clearly the troublemakers, with tragic consequences.
In 1989, what was called the “Heyselfactor” worked hard to get politicians, police and stewards to blame Liverpool supporters who, in effect, died tragically due to the incompetence and disorganization of local and national authorities. Among these victims, football fans know very well, the cousin of Steven Gerrardone of the greatest English players of all time.
A human and media tragedy
Just days after the Hillsborough tragedy, the tabloid The Sun published in one an outrageously false title, “The Truth”, where Liverpool fans were described as “urinating on the victims” or “picking the pockets of the victims lying on the ground”, while the “brave police tried to revive the victims”. It was all just one web of liesjust days after dozens of club supporters were crushed against the gates.
All of this, years later, and even among supporters of clubs who hate Liverpool, is an integral part of the national collective memory. In Liverpool, on the doors of many pubs, we still see stickers calling for a boycott of the Sun, but this call is useless, really. Because the newspaper no longer exists on the side of the Mersey River. The human tragedy, followed by the media tragedy orchestrated by The Sunpolluted the public debate not for years, but many decades, until Prime Minister David Cameron himself, in September 2012, was forced to apologize on behalf of the British State.
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