They ran towards a neutral area of the ground, which was mostly filled with Juve fans, those "neutral" fans were completely innocent victims no doubt about that and the guilt lies firmly with the Liverpool fans who did as you say run towards them. The wall itself was not fit forpurpose, but that wouldn't have been an issue had the Liverpool fans not behaved in the way they did.
There were however a hell of a lot Juve hooligans as well, they were located at the other end of the stadium though well away from the Liverpool fans, those pictures of them masked and running onto the field were clearly shown on the TV, it was just a long way for them to get to the Liverpool fans.
I remember watching it vividly.
The Juve fans rioting at the other end of the pitch was after the wall had collapsed, it was in response to what had happened at the Liverpool/Neutral end, they had nothing to do with the disaster itself which was caused by a couple of hundred Liverpool fans in a crowd of almost 60K.
The banners they had with them, the masks they used to conceal their faces, clearly showed they had premeditated something, if the roles had been reversed and these Juve fans had been located in the area the Liverpool hooligans had been with that ridiculous wall separating them from multitudes of Liverpool fans. I would not have been surprised if the situation would have happen again only in reverse.
There was clearly ill feeling between the two sets of fans for some years, Liverpool were the kings of Europe while Juve were busy buying the best players on the continent to dethrone them.The rivalry had spilled over to violence and tension building throughout the day. Both teams had the hooligan element though, whether Juve fans were reacting to what happened or not, Juve fans just didn't turn into hooligans because of the tragedy, it was very much there and they were both looking for a fight.
Anyone who went to see ourselves play in inter in the San Siro in the Champs League will testify that Italian football fans are no angels and apparently Liverpool fans had been subjected to some pretty awful treatment in the previous years final which had been ridiculously held in Rome against Roma. Again not exonerating Liverpool here, but trying to strike some balance.
Good post. But the bit in bold is exactly what I was referring to when scousers make excuses about Heysel. What's that got to do with the price of fish?
Hooliganism was common place in those times, hooligans from a different team, in a different city gave you a bit of a hiding. So you use that as some kind of excuse to kick off? Not buying it.
You're right, nothing really, just trying to show how the two parties viewed one another. There was definitely an England versus Italy thing going on back then, England were the dominant country in terms of club football back then, there was a stretch where English clubs only won the European Cup. England believed they had the best league in the world and results in Europe proved that with Liverpool being the dominant club. Italy though was at the beginning of it' own dominance of the club game. Their league was the place to be for much of the world's talent. Naturally the nationalists from both countries saw this as a banner to fight behind and that fed into the hooliganism we saw during the period.
Liverpool fans were seen as the good guys in this era really, they were never really tarnished with the hooligan brush that many London based clubs or the national team were. It's easy though to be good fans when you win everything, I guess!! Anyway they had obviously felt that sense of injustice from the previous final, some groups like the NF had infiltrated their ranks and all this led to the disaster of the 1985 final. I think they are so happy to sweep this under the carpet as a club, because firstly none of their own died in the stadium and secondly they were so outraged that anyone could find fault with their support, they felt they were beyond criticism and it hit them suddenly that they were just part of the problem like every other team in the country. There is definitely a sense of shame there, the Hillsborough disaster a couple of years later in a sense helped them push Hysell under the carpet as they were the victims this time.
Not to anyone who visited Anfield in the 70's and 80's they weren't.
Snidey fuckers caused as much bother as anybody else back then and some more with their European jaunts seeing jewellery shops, sports shops and designer clothing stores looted on a regular basis.
