After Heysel: how Italy lost the football ‘peace’

Abstract

In May 1985 in the Heysel stadium in Brussels English football stood disgraced and excluded from Europe following televised crowd disorder among Liverpool supporters at the European Cup final. Thirty-nine, mainly Italian, football fans were crushed to death in the ensuing stadium panic. The prognosis then for the English game was bleak; it was racked by fan racism and hooliganism, and it had poorly appointed stadiums and deep financial fissures. And yet this moment proved to be the nadir for England. It has since recovered its confidence, responded effectively to fan incivility, modernized its stadia and experienced considerable playing and commercial success. Instead, it is the Italian game that seems inert and mired in corruption, while fan misbehaviour stalks football in Italy. This essay explores some of the underlying reasons for these markedly different trajectories.

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