Liverpool in Europe, Part 6

Tragedy in Brussels.

The time has come in this series to look at the European season of 1984/5, culminating in yet another European Cup final for Liverpool, their fifth in eight years, but one which went disastrously, fatally wrong.

Wednesday May 29th, 1985. The Heysel Stadium, Brussels. The tragedy that occurred there remains to this day a stain on the club. It still affects us. We are still tainted by it, and taunted over it. We are still all tarred with the same brush. It was described as ’Football’s Day of Shame’ and ‘Football’s Blackest Day’.

This was Liverpool’s 140th game in European competition, spread over two decades of continuous involvement. During all that time and all those matches, Liverpool’s fans had never been involved in any serious crowd disturbance, in stark contrast to several other English clubs and most notably the England national team. Before Heysel, Liverpool fans had contributed precisely nothing to the English reputation for football hooliganism. Heysel as such remains an anomaly. Liverpool, and English clubs, paid the price for decades of bad behaviour in which, ironically, Liverpool fans played little or no part before that fateful evening.

Before we look closely into what happened on that fateful day, let’s deal with the campaign that led to it.

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