les paroles des joueurs de lfc présents au heysel

LIVERPOOL LEGENDS REMEMBER HEYSEL
Paul Rogers 05 April 2005

site officiel

Much has been written about the events of May 29 1985 but what was it like for the players of Liverpool Football Club on the night? Here are 13 differents views from 13 different players on a night no one will ever forget.
Bruce Grobbelaar "I said to myself after that game, 'I don't want to be a part of a club that caused death and destruction in a game or sport'. I felt very, very strongly. I went on holiday to Florida and I sat on the beach and thought, 'If I knock it on the head and not play any more, then these idiots have won. If I've gone then they've won, they've destroyed me and they're not going to destroy me'. That's why I decided to carry on."

Jim Beglin "The enormity of Heysel hit me like a train after the game. Dejection over losing the European Cup final to Juventus quickly gave way to disbelief when I learned that 39 people had died. I walked with my Liverpool team-mates to where the wall had crumbled and the Italian fans were crushed. The remnants of people's lives, handbags and shoes, scarves and spectacles, were strewn among the rubble. Win, lose or draw, we usually had a party after a big game. But the atmosphere at our base in Brussels was very sombre. We swapped stories and several of the wives and girlfriends were distressed because they had actually seen the bodies being piled up under the stand. The players all felt numb. We just wanted to get home."

Alan Hansen The first we knew of what was to follow was when we were in the dressing rooms and people came in and said that outside there was massive trouble. We, the players, had no idea where it was or who was involved. That the match was played might seem ghoulish but it was the right decision. The authorities could afford to take no more chances, people had come a long way, there were 39 people dead and tensions were running high. They could not simply be pushed out on to the streets. There was no other option. The match was played on a kind of autopilot. Nobody out on the pitch had a real insight into the magnitude of the disaster but there was no atmosphere in the stadium and no heart to the game. It was unreal. It was the next morning, in the hotel, when what happened at Heysel sank in. Everywhere you went there was a sense of disbelief and the flight home was silent. It affected our manager, Joe Fagan, more than anybody. When we landed, he was in tears."

Mark Lawrenson "At the time we were sitting in the dressing room totally numb because we couldn't put together the idea of people dying and a game of football. We had heard some people had died and we knew there was trouble because a few of us had been out to look what was going on, but we did not know the scale. When the chief of police came in and said you've got to play we couldn't believe it. He said he'd been in the Juventus dressing room and explained that if we didn't play there would be more trouble, so that sort of made sense. Even so it was one of those occasions when with hindsight we should have said no. What could they have done, made us play?"

Gary Gillespie "Once the decision to play the game had been taken, it felt like the right thing to do. The game itself was a bit of a non-entity. It was poor quality and no-one shone. No-one, certainly, deserved to win it. And, obviously, the penalty decision was a bit dubious as well. A ball came over the top of our defence from Platini and Boniek latched on to the end of it. I charged after him and he cut across me as I was getting back to him and caught my leg. He went down like any good centre-forward might do. If you look at the replays, it was definitely outside the box. There were no complaints from the players, and certainly not from me. People had gone to a football match and lost their lives."

Phil Neal "It was as if it was something that happens to other people, not in front of your own eyes, particularly when you bear in mind that we'd had 25 years in Europe and not a hint of trouble anywhere. In the dressing room, Sammy Lee was crying. I couldn't even remember kicking a ball during the game."

Ronnie Whelan "We were obviously aware something had gone on but not to the extent it had. Nobody wanted to play. We went out because we were told to but it was horrible. You could sense the fans thinking, 'What is going on here, we just want to get out'. Yet even at that stage we didn't really know the precise details. That didn't hit us until afterwards when we went out at the end after we had been changed. The terraces were a mess and you could see the shoes and the bits of clothing strewn all over the place. It was only then the full horror of what had gone on started to sink in."

Sammy Lee "The sad thing is that when we went out before the game, prior to all the problems, it seemed such a great atmosphere. The fans were kicking a ball about, I'll never forget, and the ball got played back into them. The game was an absolute blank. I was numb. I couldn't even tell you what time they scored. People said to me, 'What was it like going out?' and I couldn't remember going out. I could not remember going out. I wouldn't be able to tell you what our team was."

Kenny Dalglish "No one really knew what was going on. In situations like these, the people who have least information are the players. We are cocooned from everything, just told to wait until someone decides something. Some of the lads were popping in and out, but nobody really knew what was going on. Chaos hid the truth. Even people watching did not appreciate what they were witnessing. Friends of mine who were at Heysel told me afterwards they never knew that had been fatalities. They knew there had been trouble but not to what extent. If I had known about the fatalities, I would not have wanted to play. It's easy to understand why so many people left. If I had been a supporter in that corner, and thought people had died, I would not have stayed on to watch a football match."

Ian Rush "It was the only game, right from being a kid, when I wasn't bothered whether we won or lost. As a professional, I approached every game, even friendlies, with a fierce determinationto win.That time, I honestly did not care. The game itself seemed almost unreal. I have never in my life been less mentally-prepared for a football match. And the same applied to every other member of the Liverpool team. We knew that the penalty, which Michel Platini converted to win the match for Juventus, should not have been awarded, that the offence took place well outside the penalty area. We knew also that we should have been given a penalty in the second half. But nobody could raise any argument. It hardly seemed to matter. I just wanted to get it over with and find my family. I had never felt like that before."

John Wark "It was decided that cancelling the match might provoke more trouble, so at 9.42pm it began. I recall Juventus won after Michel Platini scored from the penalty spot. It wasn't a penalty but there were no complaints from Liverpool players because we just wanted to go home. We knew people had died and were still dying. I remember sitting in the dressing-room with the likes of Paul Walsh and Kenny Dalglish around me. Very little was said. We were just staring at each other."

Paul Walsh "What is most disappointing looking back on my career is that Heysel should have been the most memorable game. When you look at the European Cup Final now, it's always played in a top stadium like the Nou Camp or the Stade de France, yet we were playing in that dump."

Alan Kennedy "I was looking at the fans, looking at the lads and checking on things. You could see things happening and I didn't like these things and I wanted to go into the fans and tell them, 'Stop it!'. I was no more than 20 yards from where the tragedy happened. I saw people falling over and you can't do anything about it. I can't remember anybody opening their mouth on the bus journey home. There were no drinks on the plane afterwards. I just wanted to come home. It was a disaster from start to finish."