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Premonitions of a stadium death trap in Brussels

On the road with Attila the Stockbroker

Not so much “on the road” as “off the road” at the moment, writing my autobiography, published in September — and I’ve just finished it. Here’s another excerpt.

In my last column, I described my introduction to radical politics via Enver Hoxha and Radio Tirana, aged about 15.

Just over 20 years later, my continued surreal interest in Albania took me to the Heysel Stadium in Belgium and then off to Brussels with Mike, Tim, Bomber and Jim to indulge our passion for Belgian beer and, indulging my silly Albania obsession, to cheer their no-hope national team on in a World Cup qualifying match.

October 17, 1984. The night when a couple of days abroad with good mates for some fine beer, a laugh and a silly, one-sided football match where we’d be shouting ridiculous made-up slogans for the Stalinist underdogs — and I’d be waving my little picture of Comrade Enver Hoxha on a stick — turned into a premonition of hell.

We got well hammered in some of my old haunts in the city centre, then got the tram to the Heysel stadium and rolled into the away end. Needing a bit of support to make staying upright easier after all that Delirium Tremens, I flopped onto one of the crash barriers. It promptly gave way and pitched me headlong down the terrace.

I wasn’t hurt but we were all shocked. We looked around at a stadium in a dreadful state. Crumbling terracing, weeds growing in the cracks, a couple more of the crash barriers near us obviously unfit for purpose, gaps in the stands where seats should be.

“If a big game’s played here, this place could be a bloody death trap!” we said to each other, utterly shocked.

Eight months later, on May 29 1985, a wall would collapse at the European cup final between Liverpool and Juventus, killing 39 Juve fans and injuring 600.

The disaster was triggered by crowd disorder sparked by bad ticketing arrangements. But it seems obvious to me that that, if the stadium had been properly maintained, far fewer people — if any — would have been killed or injured. The disaster led to an indefinite ban on English clubs from all European club competitions.

Of course, on the evening that we were there, there was no hint of such carnage. The result? Belgium won 3-1. Improbably, Albania did equalise though, leading to — careful — leaping about among our little group.

I am a firm supporter of safe standing at football, always have been, and am very angry that the Thatcher-led agenda following Heysel and the subsequent awful Hillsborough disaster led to the imposition of all-seater stadia and all kinds of other ludicrous restrictions on fan culture in Britain.

These disasters were triggered by bad stadium maintenance and equally poor crowd control — enhanced in the case of Hillsborough, of course, by cover-ups, police lies and calumnies against Liverpool fans in the Sun “newspaper” after the event, which were seized upon by the biased and anti-football Taylor Report.

Now that the truth about Hillsborough has been revealed, the report spawned by it should be torn up and safe standing ought to return, thus ending the silly situation where thousands of fans stand in all-seater stadia every week — I know I do — and the authorities turn a blind eye to it.

Overpriced, sanitised and torn to bits by greedy moneymen and ludicrously overpaid players, English football needs a massive overhaul.
That isn’t in any way to play down the awful tragedies which took place. I’ll never forget what I saw at the Heysel Stadium that night.

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