Go to football and don’t go home. Die in the field. How scary. How much horror repeated, regardless of geography or historical time but with common threads: bad organization, stadiums, police repression and fan responsibility, sometimes gathered in groups called barra bravas, hooligans or ultras. What happened in the Bosque de la Plata was the same film, with other actors. There is a disturbing background. There are only four.
The Lima tragedy in 1964
Tokyo will host the 1964 Olympics. On May 24, Peru and Argentina met at the National Stadium in Lima. The Albiceleste arrived with four consecutive victories, the only chance for Peru was to win the game that was played when the government of Jorge Belaúnde was facing a serious social and economic crisis manifested in strikes, marches and the first sketches of guerrilla groups. Breeding medium to which you only had to light the fuse so that everything flew in the air.
Eyebrows; Bertolotti, Pazos; Morales, Mori, Perfume; Cabrera, Malleo, Domínguez, Manfredi, Ochoa, cited in the old way of the formations were the Argentines of the national team directed by Ernesto Duchini. At 18 ‘of the second half, Néstor Manfredi put the Argentines ahead. At 35, Victor Lobatón scored the equalizer but Uruguayan referee Angel Pazos overturned it by highlighting Kiko’s previous plan against defender Horacio Morales. the beginning of the end. Victor Malaysia Vazquez, or the Black Bomb, recognized bar Alianza, jumped on the pitch to attack Pazos. Soon another fan entered. And the tribunes in chorus accompanied the protest and the aggression. Pazos suspended the game and the outbreak of protest spread throughout the stadium. The police under the command of commander Jorge Azambuja authorized the crackdown with tear gas. Some chronicles of the time assure that these weapons were bought a short time ago by Belaúnde to contain the potestas in the streets.
It was chaos. The public stampede to want to leave the state on the run from gas resulted in avalanches in the midst of police action that had also released the dogs. Finally, three gates of the stadium were closed. It was a death trap. The official report spoke of 328 dead and 500 injured.
Gate 12 of the River Plate Stadium
Four years later, on June 23, 1968, the Superclásico gathered a crowd in the Monumental. The game was bad. It ended 0-0. Before the start, Angel Clemente Rojas took Carrizo’s emblematic hat and the Great Amadeo carried Rojitas across the field until he retrieved it. An almost childish joke. During the game Amadeo took revenge. Norberto Madurga breaks the River’s defensive line and goes to face the goalkeeper hand in hand. Amadeo did not move, motioned to the Doll who had been accused of offside and Madurga meekly hands him the ball. There had been no position advanced nor had it been penalized. Disaster came when the forgettable tie was decreed.
In the decentralization of the centenary capital, Boca fans failed to win the way through Gate 12, today named with the letter L. 71 people were crushed to death and 113 were injured. Even today it is not clear why this happened.
The access stairs to the grandstand were poorly lit and the late afternoon sun left the entire path in the shade. One version claimed that the scissor doors were closed. Another, that they were open but that the turnstiles had been left in place. And another indicates that those who managed to jump the turnstiles were repressed by the mounted police in the operation led by General Mario Fonseca. Those were hard times, Juan Carlos Onganía was the dictator of the time and no popular demonstrations were tolerated, including those in the courts. The investigation into the tragedy resembled a parody or a drill to find out the truth. The Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Borda, assured that the doors were open and that there had been no repression. Was it mass suicide? It sounds like a joke.
Two months later, Américo Di Vietro, Mayor of River, and foreman Marcelino Cabrera were ordered quotes. At the end of November they were fired and the embargo on the club was lifted. A fund was also created for the relatives of the victims. Only two accepted that compensation. The summary of what happened and what was investigated was pronounced in the following classic at the Bombonera when the Boca fans sang with anger and pain: “There was no door, there was no turnstile, it was the stick that struck with a machete.”
In Europe there were also deaths in the name of the ball
Mass stadium deaths crossed the Atlantic nearly two decades later. Once inside Belgium in a final of what is now the Champions and another in a semifinal of the FA Cup. Those two disasters marked European football and their consequences continue to this day.
Liverpool had won the 1984 Champions League at the Olympics. It had been 1-1 in regulation time and on penalties he beat Roma. The following year he returns to the final, this time against Juventus. The old wooden stadium in the Heyselin Belgium, it was the seat of that party on May 29, 1985.
UEFA, as it does today, had distributed 20,000 tickets for each team and the remaining 10,000 were for Belgians or neutral fans of other nationalities. In those days, Liverpool fans flocked to see their team. And hooligans were part of it. With tickets sold out, many Reds fans bought the rest of the Neutrals. And there was also overselling. The result was that Heysel couldn’t keep up. It was then that the hooligans wanted to gain space in the lead at Juve and literally crushed the fans bianconeri against the wire mesh at the end of the grandstand Z and the one that overlooked the playing field. They crushed them while the teams were already on the pitch. The police repressed the fans who had managed to jump onto the pitch to escape the British attack and the deaths began to be counted. And to pile up the corpses on a nearby beach. From inside the Heysel, the bodies and ambulances carrying the wounded could be seen. The official report stated that 32 Italian citizens, four Belgians, two French and one English had died.
Juventus did not want to play the final but Uefa insisted. Captains Gaetano Scirea and Phil Neal read an official statement on the loudspeaker, to reassure the public. Unusually, the game was played. The bodies of the dead were piled up behind the official gallery. With an hour and 15 minutes later than expected, Liverpool and Juventus kicked off the match which was refereed by the Swiss André Daina. The British, led by Joe Fagan, formed with Grobelaar; Neil, Begin, Lawrenson, Hansen; Nicol, Wehlan, Walsh, Wark; Run, Dalglish. For his part Giuseppe Trapattoni put in Tacconi; Favero, Brio, Scirea, Cabrini; Bonini, Tardelli; Boniek, Platini; Briaschi, Paolo Rossi. Fifteen minutes into the second half, Michel Platini converted Whelam’s penalty against Boniek. Juventus were European champions. He had Orejona in the locker room. And thirty dead fans on a beach.
UEFA, which insisted that the match be played, then banned English teams from participating in continental competitions until 1990. A hypocritical decision, but one that also changed the economic map of football. The big names no longer had any intention of playing in the English tournament and this favored the dominance of the Italian and, to a lesser extent, Spanish clubs, which monopolized the figures of the time.
The Hillsborough Massacre
Flags of the gods usually appear on the stands of Anfield networks with the number 96. At the gates of the stadium there is a memorial for those 96 Liverpool fans who died on April 15, 1989 in Hillsborough, Sheffield’s old Wednesday stadium. Victim 97 died two years ago, remaining in a vegetative state from that terrifying afternoon in which the FA Cup semifinal was played between the Reds and the then powerful Nottingham Forest. At 6 minutes the game was stopped.
Same story again. More people than the court could receive. Liverpool fans insisted so much for the gates to open that a police officer erected the barriers. It was a massacre. Those who entered hit those who were already on the steps. They pressed them against the fence. Outside, the police tried to prevent the invasion with the universal police style. Hillsborough changed English football forever.
Margaret Thatcher ordered an investigation whose findings are known as “The Taylor Report” from the name of the deputy who led it. There have been several conclusions. The stadiums in England were old, the hooligans an unstoppable plague and the clubs are close to bankruptcy without being able to restructure their structures. Thatcher opened the game and the first private investors arrived and, above all, the television capitals.
The combo took four years to concretely end with the birth of the Premier League in 1993. What happened? Capital invests in improving old fields or building new ones, tickets are put at skyrocketing prices and hooligans, mostly unemployed, are given the consolation of going to the pub to watch their teams’ games on TV. It’s a tight summary, but that’s what happened. Hillsborough, at the cost of blood, was the embryo of what is now the most expensive league, the richest clubs and the most watched games in the world.
Source: Clarin
