Football's darkest month: 40 years on

The Heysel disaster, the Bradford fire and the St Andrew's riot

Forty years ago this month - May 1985 - was probably the nadir of English football.

That month saw three terrible tragedies which highlighted how dangerous the game had become for spectators.

In today’s Substack I take you back to the 1980s - when I was a teenager on the terraces - and look at football hooliganism and the disasters at Bradford, Birmingham and - most famously - Heysel in Brussels.

PICTURE: Portsmouth v Millwall. Fratton Park, 1985. © A Casual Look courtesy of Lower Block

The 40^th anniversary of the Heysel disaster on Thursday (29 May 2025) passed pretty much unnoticed in Britain.

There was no wall-to-wall coverage on Sky News, The Sun, or the BBC, who usually love an anniversary.

The BBC did publish this article, in which the Mayor of the Liverpool Region, Steve Rotheram, perhaps explained why Heysel is much less commemorated than its sister tragedy, Hillsborough, which happened four years later.

“For our city it’s an indelible stain,” conceded Rotheram.

Fourteen Liverpool fans were later convicted of manslaughter for their part at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels but were jailed for no more than three years.

But before I go into detail about what happened at Heysel, let me first paint you a picture of what life was like for a football fan in the mid-1980s.

I was 17 in May 1985 and pretty obsessed with football. Still am, to be honest.

In fact writing this article brought back a rose-tinted nostalgia for the days when you could just turn up on the day of a match, pay at the turnstiles and stand wherever you liked on the terraces.

The football may not have been as pretty as it is now but there was no VAR, far less diving and play-acting, and it took a lot more to get a red card.

The presence of hooliganism also gave football a frisson of danger which was a bit of a thrill.

In 1985 I was living in Bournemouth, a town which was occasionally visited and terrorised by hooligan firms like Leicester City’s Baby Squad (so named because of their youth).

The clubs which had the biggest hooligan followings were West Ham, Leeds, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Spurs, Millwall, Birmingham and Portsmouth.

In those days the hooligan elite - or pond scum, depending on your point of view - was West Ham’s ICF (Inter City Firm), the Service Crew from Leeds, Millwall’s Bushwackers, Chelsea’s Headhunters, the Zulus from Birmingham, and Portsmouth’s 6.57 Crew, who got their name from the first train to London from Pompey on a Saturday morning.

My team - Brighton - had lost an FA Cup Final two years before and then been relegated from the first tier of English football.

In the late 1970s, and early 80s, Brighton’s Goldstone Ground was regularly visited by the country’s worst hooligans.

PICTURE: Brighton v Bristol Rovers at The Goldstone @A Casual Look courtesy of Lower Block

I cannot give you the date, or even the final score but I distinctly remember watching from the old East Terrace, aged about 12, as Arsenal’s hooligan element climbed over or pushed down a fence and chased all the Brighton fans out of the North Stand and onto the pitch.

Arsenal’s hooligans in those days were quite “tasty” and one of their firms was known as The Gooners, a term which is now used by the ordinary family-friendly football fans of the 2020s.

I don’t remember being that scared. I just remember being humiliated, like the French must have felt when the German Army just marched in and took over the whole country in 1940.

Anyway football hooliganism was rife throughout the 1980s and it reached its peak in the 1984/85 season.

Whereas in the 70s hooligans were stereotyped as skinheads, by the mid-1980s a new sub-culture had taken over on the terraces - the “casuals”, who spent money on expensive sweaters, polo shirts, jeans and trainers which all had to be the right brand.

The website Lower Block has some good stuff about casual culture here.

As a 17-year-old I was on the fringes of the “casuals” scene at the time.

I remember buying a yellow Pringle sweater, a Robe di Kappa tracksuit top, probably a few other outfits which I’d wear to football.

On 13 March 1985 there was an infamous game when Millwall fans literally ran riot at Luton before, during and after an FA Cup sixth round match.

If you look closely at the footage you will see the hooligans are all immaculately dressed in the classic uniform of the “casuals”

John Carlisle, the Conservative MP for Luton North, told the House of Commons: "My constituents are very angry at the destruction of their homes, their shops, their town and their football club. The only answer is to inflict on those the physical pain that they so readily inflicted on others last night."

Luton’s chairman, David Evans - who adored Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and hoped to be given a safe Tory seat - reacted by banning away fans from future games and introducing a membership scheme, with identity cards, for Luton supporters.

Many police officers, Luton fans and local residents were injured on the night, but miraculously nobody was killed.

But, on 11 May 1985 - which was the last day of the football season - there were two tragedies which did claim lives.

It was a beautiful, sunny day - if a bit windy - and Bradford City were due to be presented with the Third Division championship trophy after their home game with Lincoln at Valley Parade.

The fans were in a celebratory mood but about 40 minutes in match commentator John Helm noticed something, and commented on it.

In this article, Helm told the BBC: “[Bradford midfielder] Stuart McCall had the ball in his hands ready to take a throw-in and I just noticed over his shoulder, about seven or eight rows back, a tiny glow of fire.”

Four-and-a-half minutes later the entire stand had burnt down and 56 fans were dead or had suffered fatal burns injuries.

“Four-and-a-half minutes. That how savage that fire was,” recalled Helm.

The inferno, whipped up by the wind, spread down the main stand so fast that dozens of fans were trapped by it, unable to get out quick enough.

The whole incident is on YouTube and it is absolutely terrifying to watch, so be warned.

It turned out that a discarded cigarette had set light to piles of litter underneath the old wooden main stand, which - on a windy day - went up like a torch.

For the next two seasons - while Valley Parade was being rebuilt - Bradford City moved into Odsal Stadium, a rugby league ground, and in September 1986 Leeds United were the visitors.

The Leeds hooligans came to the fore again, setting fire to a chip van on one of the terraces and then chasing Bradford fans like a horde of marauding Vikings.

Stuart McCall - who I mentioned earlier, in relation to the Bradford fire - was interviewed by the Bradford Telegraph and Argus several years later and said: “Those Leeds thugs, a disgrace to the club, were making people flee in fear of their lives and haunted by what had gone on less than two years before.”

McCall, a boyhood Leeds fan, said: “I vowed to myself I would never ever join Leeds if I had the chance. It would have been too much like kicking all those City fans in the teeth.”

He joined Everton in 1988 then Rangers, Bradford again, and finally Sheffield United.

The Bradford fire would lead to smoking being banned in all football stadiums, and the development of many old wooden stadiums.

By the way, Forest Green Rovers - who are in football’s fifth tier and are owned by eccentric industrialist Dale Vince - are planning to build an all-wooden stadium, Eco Park, in Gloucestershire. Fire-proofed, we hope.

The Bradford fire naturally hogged the headlines, because it was so horrific and the death toll so high.

But that day there was another - often forgotten - tragedy in the world of football.

Birmingham City - whose team included a young David Seaman, destined for Arsenal and England - had won promotion to the top division, but on the last day of the season they were hosting Leeds at their ground, St Andrew’s.

It was a clash of hooligan titans - The Zulus versus The Service Crew.

Legend has it around 10,000 Leeds fans were in Birmingham that day, and the match was repeatedly held-up by clashes between fans on the terraces and on the pitch.

At one point a wall at the Leeds end collapsed, falling onto and killing Ian Hambridge, 15.

In 1998 a plaque to Ian was unveiled at St Andrew’s. It reads: “As a football supporter, one of us, never to be forgotten.”

Lord Justice Popplewell, who later chaired a public inquiry into the events in Bradford and Birmingham, said: “It more clearly resembled the Battle of Agincourt than a football match.”

Bradford and Birmingham were bad enough, but worse was to come that May in 1985.

Everton had won the First Division (which would become the Premier League seven years later) by a country mile - 13 points - from Liverpool.

But it was the red side of Merseyside who were looking forward to a European final.

I remember tuning in to watching the game on TV on the night of 29 May.

It was the European Cup Final in Brussels, between Liverpool and Juventus.

Liverpool, the English champions, had in their team great players like Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Alan Hansen while the Turin team included Italian legends Marco Tardelli and Paolo Rossi as well as Poland’s Zbigniew Boniek and Frenchman Michel Platini, one of the best players of his generation.

But as the pundits discussed the game beforehand it was clear that trouble was brewing on the crumbling terraces of the old Heysel stadium.

Segregation was poor and simmering antagonism between the two sets of fans suddenly triggered an attack by Liverpool supporters, many of whom had been drinking all day.

It was very similar to that night at the Goldstone where I remember Arsenal fans invading the North Stand.

But as the Italians fled, a crush was caused at one end of the terrace, a wall collapsed, and 39 people died.

The tragedy played out live on television with the commentators struggling to put into words what was happening in front of their eyes.

The game should have been postponed but officials feared there would be more trouble if they did so, so after a delay of more than an hour it finally kicked off and Juventus won 1-0, with a Platini penalty.

But the score was almost irrelevant amid the death toll and Platini’s ashen face suggested it was a hollow victory.

In 2015 Francesco Caremani, the author of a book, Heysel: The Truth, told me: “Heysel was the worst massacre in the history of world football, because there was nothing random or accidental in what happened.”

“Hooliganism was well known in England and widely underestimated in Europe. After Heysel the whole world realised how serious hooliganism had become, but the British did nothing to combat it,” he added.

English clubs were banned from European competition for several years – ironically Liverpool’s great rivals Everton were the biggest losers – but Mr Caremani says nothing was done to reform football in England until after the Hillsborough disaster four years later.

In that case the victims were ironically Liverpool fans.

Mr Caremani said: “I’m convinced that Hillsborough is the son of the failure of memory of Heysel.”

When Liverpool played Juventus for the first time since Heysel some unforgiving Italian fans raised placards which suggested the deaths at Hillsborough were some sort of payback for the actions of Liverpool fans at Heysel.

After Heysel some Liverpool fans claimed they were provoked by stones being thrown from the Juventus section.

Mr Caremani says there is no truth in this claim and added: “The English were trying to invent excuses for a shame that they will never erase.”
Fourteen Liverpool fans were convicted for their part in the violence at Heysel.”

In 2005 one of them, Terry Wilson, visited Arezzo in Italy to try and apologise to Otello Lorentini, who lost his only son at Heysel.

As well as the deaths, 600 Juventus fans were injured, some of whom were permanently disabled.

One, Carla Gonnelli, went into a coma. When she eventually woke up she discovered that her father, who had taken her to the match with her, had died.

The Heysel stadium was later renovated and renamed the King Baudouin stadium but there are persistent rumours that it will be demolished and replaced with houses.

In 2015 - on the 30^th anniversary - Juventus were back in the final of the European Cup’s successor tournament, the Champions’ League.

But fans of the “Old Lady” of Italian football were left disappointed as they lost 3-1 to Barcelona, with one of the goals scored by former Liverpool player Luis Suarez.

Juventus marked the 40^th anniversary this week by interviewing former players who were at Heysel.

Massimo Briaschi, a centre forward, said: “It was an unbelievable situation and I had already sensed the signs that something bad could happen during the morning walk, which we did in the central areas of Brussels, noticing the atmosphere amongst the English fans - we must remember that it was the era of the hooligans - from the early hours of the day.”

They also inaugurated a new memorial, the Verso Altrove, on Strada della Continassa, near Juventus’s Allianz Stadium in Turn.

Juventus President, Gianluca Ferrero, said this week: “The Heysel tragedy still evokes a lot of emotion in all of us today, for the loss of 39 people on a day that should have been filled with celebration, and instead turned into a day of mourning and terror.”

“Juventus, from the very beginning, has always been committed to ensuring that this day is never forgotten,” he added.

But Heysel does seem to have been largely forgotten by Liverpool fans, and English football in general.

In 2021 former Liverpool player Mark Lawrenson, who was in the team that night, told the Off The Ball podcast: “The strange thing is…Heysel is never, ever mentioned. Very very rarely is Heysel ever mentioned, for whatever reason.”

“It’s almost glossed over a little bit, which of course it should never ever be,” he said.

The host asked him: “Is it a bit of a shame?”

Lawrenson said: “Yes, there’s a bit of that. There’s definitely a bit of that.”

He described it as a “dirty little secret.”

Four years later South Yorkshire Police officers - whose prejudice against Liverpool fans was no doubt influenced by the behaviour of the hooligan minority at Heysel - treated supporters like animals and allowed a disaster to unfold and claim the lives of 97 people.