The Explosive 80s: How Heysel Changed Football (2005)

• 76%
• 2005
• Documentary
• David Mellor
• Bernard Ingham
• Phelim Drew

Today the English Premiership is successful, hugely financed and football is family entertainment. It used to be so different. The watershed, when the seeds of the modern game were sown, came in the 80s, at a time when Margaret Thatcher viewed football hooliganism as one of the evils of Modern Britain. Then came Heysel. This documentary will provide a detailed account of that night in Brussels, when 39 spectators were killed before the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus, and explore the impact the tragedy had on English football, from the ban on club teams playing abroad, the encouragement of a heavy-handed approach to policing football fans leading to the Hillsborough disaster and, ultimately, to the transformation of the game as the country's top clubs sought to re-package football as an exciting, glamorous and lucrative form of entertainment. Heysel: The Day Football Died will draw on the moving personal accounts of witnesses - players from both teams, fans and those who lost loved ones, as well as key officials in the Thatcher and Belgian governments. The programme will also explore the range of elements, catastrophic errors of judgement by UEFA, inadequate policing, the use of a decaying stadium, poor ticketing arrangements which combined to make Heysel the tragedy that it was.