20 years on from Heysel
I have just been watching Liverpool v Juventus in the quarter final of the Champions' League and found myself supporting the Scousers, in spite of my United allegiances. In spite of all that stick from Birkenhead scallies I still feel like I should be supporting any English team left in the competition. I think that UEFA's decision to ban English teams after Heysel was ultimately wrong and unfair. Could even they have got away with such an arbitrary decision under the new Europe?I did see a guy on TV today saying that it was really UEFA's fault because the stadium wasn't up to the job of hosting such a big event. Certainly it put English clubs back a long way in Europe, as I saw over the long period of readjustment for United after readmittance, though it does seem to have coincided with a sea change in football support. I wonder how much of this was really down to Heysel and how much down to Sky and the massive injection of cash they put into football.
I know a lot of people go on about how football is such a big business these days and how it has lost its soul, but when its soul in England at least was a hooligan, isn't it better to have got away from it? I suppose United have seen both sides of it, from the bad times when a large section of the supporters were violent lunatics to the good when United has replaced the idiots with 'prawn sandwich eaters', and I am sure that the way things are now is better.
Anyway I was really pleased with the Scousers' first half performance, when they came out all fired up and played really well for half an hour, but ultimately they gave Juve a goal to get themselves back into the tie. The ITV commentators blamed the mistake on a goalkeeping error, referring to a series of high-profile mistakes by Premiership keepers. I can't help wondering how Shilton, Jennings and Banks would have coped with the new balls which swerve more than the old fashioned lumps of leather which they had to deal with. It was a bit unlucky for them really because it looked exactly as if they would get the fairy tale ending during that first half, but now it looks like The Old Lady will do exactly enough to get through, again.
0 Comments:
<< Home