Heysel 40 Years On: The Prequel In Rome, A Night When Liverpool Fans Lost Their Innocence In Europe

A year before the horror of Brussels – 41 years ago today – a bloody episode in the Italian capital changed Scouse perceptions when Roma ultras ran wild with knives

ROME HAD NEVER been a centre of football power. Before 1980, Lazio and AS Roma, the city’s largest clubs, had won the domestic title just once each. So it was unfortunate that the European Cup final should be scheduled for Rome’s Olympic Stadium in 1984, the year after Roma won the league and qualified for the competition.

Playing such a huge game at a team’s home stadium should not have been allowed to happen, but Uefa has never shown the greatest ability to apply common sense. Even today, the risk of a similar situation occurring is taken almost every year and occurs too often. The inevitable happened in 1984 and Roma reached the final, along with Liverpool. Uefa probably thought it was entirely in keeping with the city’s reputation for throwing people to the lions.

The headlines in the Roman papers after the semi-finals said: ‘The Barbarians are coming,’ which was worrying. A riot when tickets went on sale at the Olympic stadium increased the sense of foreboding and barely more than 8,000 fans travelled to Italy to support Liverpool.

More than 25,000 had made their way to the city seven years earlier when it was a neutral venue and headed home flushed with victory and the praise of the local police and politicians. This was a special place for Liverpool fans, the stadium where the greatest feat in the history of the club had been achieved. All fondness for the city itself would evaporate on one terrifying night.

From the moment we landed at a small airport some way from the city it was clear that it was going to be a long and difficult day. Paramilitary police in combat fatigues and riot gear met us and loaded us on to buses. Those who were hoping to see the Sistine Chapel complained until they saw the reception we got on the ring road.

Carloads of youths in cloth-topped Fiats shadowed the coaches, pulling alongside while an occupant popped up through the roof to fire a flare or hurl a brick at the bus – all at motorway speed. Burgundy and yellow flags were everywhere in the blocks of flats that sit on the seven hills and there was a clear feeling that the result was a formality.

Liverpool could not win.

We were taken to a disused funfair and kept there under armed guard for most of the afternoon. So we sat and drank beer. Bored, we decided to see if it was possible to get away and see some of the sights. The carabinieri were surprisingly amenable to us leaving.

‘Wanna go the Vatican, mate,’ I said, blessing myself. The policeman pointed up the street.

After two steps, we were going no farther. In the direction the man had indicated stood a huge mob of Roma fans, who immediately became alert when we came into sight.

We went back into the funfair. I blessed myself again, indicating that I was praising the Lord for seeing me through the valley of the shadow of death. The policeman smirked. He understood.

We arrived at the ground 90 minutes before kick-off and what we found in the streets around the stadium unsettled us even more. They were deserted. Only Scousers wandered about, but what they had to say was unpleasant.

There had been much trouble in the tourist areas, with gangs of locals on scooters chasing down small groups or stragglers among the Liverpool fans and slashing them as they passed.

Often, at away games, there were expansive rumours about stabbings and beatings but they almost always came from the proto-hooligans. Here, they were coming from reputable sources.

Inside the ground the fears were confirmed. There were people with bruised faces and patched-up shallow slash wounds that they dismissed as deep scratches; proof, if we needed it, that there was the potential for violence here on a scale to which we were unused.

We had barely got through the turnstiles when we met John, whose father is Italian. He’d travelled by train, stayed with relatives near Turin and had driven to Rome with a couple of cousins. He explained why the streets were deserted. Italian fans, he said, like getting inside the ground early. His cousins had insisted that he go into the stadium three hours before kick-off.

‘We were the only ones in our end for two hours,’ John said, aggrieved. ‘I didn’t mind the abuse of the whole ground, but I didn’t like the flares.’ Every Roma nutter with a firework had set his sights on this pathetic little group.

There had been plenty of action once the main body of Liverpool fans arrived. A hail of missiles came from the Roma supporters adjacent to the away section, so the police baton-charged the foreigners. Stevie, another mate, had his camera broken by an Italian nightstick. There was no protection. The police felt like another arm of Roma’s hooligans.

A volley of flares thrilled the locals and they began to sing, a noise as fearsome as in any ground I’ve visited – and this without a roof to funnel the noise. Thankfully, the game took our mind off the reaction on the terraces.

The match ended in a 1-1 draw and went to penalties. Steve Nicol missed the first and the Roma fans celebrated like the cup was theirs. However, Bruno Conti and Francesco Graziani also missed and the Liverpool end went crazy.

I have a photograph taken a moment after Alan Kennedy had scored the decisive penalty to seal the victory. While friends and family celebrate to the camera, I am standing in the background, looking away with a strange expression on my face. I was watching the angry Roma supporters throw their scarves and banners into piles and set them alight before leaving. It was surreal. A ring of fire hemmed us in. I know exactly what I was thinking: Shit, we’ve got to leave the stadium and go outside soon.

My two brothers in the foreground and me, in pale blue shirt, in the rear, nervous

Some 20 minutes later, as we walked up a ramp to road level, the attack started. Metal bins were set aflame and hurled down the steep grass verges, supplemented by bricks, bottles and sticks. At street level, the Romans charged, a surge that seemed uncomfortably well timed to coincide with tear gas the police shot into the rear of the Liverpool fans. As a contribution to crowd control, it was not the carabinieri’s finest hour.

From behind came another roar. ‘We’re screwed,’ I remember saying to no one. And then more Italians arrived, only this time wearing the light blue scarves of Lazio. They were coming to our aid – or at least to fight the Roma. Either way, those of us who had any sense – or were in the right position – made their escape in the confusion.

At the relative safety of the coach, I needed to empty a nervous bladder. As I moved into the bushes, Big Al came with me, ‘just in case’. It was just as well. A few seconds into the piss, he called out my name.

Behind me, 15 yards or so away, were two Italians in Roma ski hats and one had a knife. I turned, shouted, peed all over my trousers and watched them weigh up the situation and decide to back away. As a general rule, I’d advise against getting into circumstances where you’re facing a man with a knife and your knob is hanging out.

Everyone on the coach had a good chortle at me, but the laughter was panicky. People were very scared. However, bravado grew in direct correlation with our distance from the ground and by the time we reached the airport some of the shirt-wearers were claiming to have ‘run the Roma’. It was typical. The big talk of football supporters rarely had a mooring in reality.

Back in Liverpool, the local news said that about 10 fans had been stabbed. Then, the night after the match, we saw Ian being interviewed on TV.

He didn’t say much and had a large plaster across a broken nose. What he said when he came home was shocking.

Ian was the youngest of three brothers, the eldest, Kevin, being part of our little group of match-goers. We’d bump into Stephen, the middle brother, at away games. George, their father, was a fine man, strong, full of integrity and not to be trifled with.

Once, he happened upon some Liverpool supporters beating up a Manchester United fan. He could not walk on. He dragged the youth from the fray, ignored the insults and took him home before seeing him to Lime Street in a taxi. In Rome in 1984, he again saw something he could not let pass.

A large group of Italians were kicking a boy in a red shirt all over the street. This was at a time when the majority of Liverpool fans were backing off, trying to get away from the violence. George didn’t and dragged the lad, who happened to be Italian, away from the mob. But in the moments it took, the police and away supporters had disappeared.

Only predatory, angry Roma fans remained. ‘We had our backs to the river,’ Ian said. ‘And hundreds of them just stood there, looking at us.’

There were police lines not far away, and father and son decided the only way out was to head in that direction at full pelt. ‘In Britain, you would have met a wall of kicks and punches,’ Ian said. ‘But the mob opened up, swallowed us, and the next thing I know they were kicking me and hitting me with branches.’

His father had somehow managed to push back the crowd, pick up two branches – which the Roma fans had stripped off trees before the game to use as weapons – and rush over to attempt to rescue his son. ‘The crowd split and as he was telling me to get up, a young lad ran across behind him. I could see the knife. He stabbed him hard here.’ Ian gestured to the lower back, in the area of the kidneys. ‘The blade went all the way in.’

In 1984, we had not heard the word puncicate. This is the act of stabbing an opposing fan in the buttocks, the idea being to humiliate rivals with a painful knife wound without threatening their lives. Its apologists say it goes back to medieval times. In Rome, it has been elevated to a cultural symbol. Even today, travelling fans risk being stabbed in the Eternal City.

The aim is to pierce the fleshy buttocks. The ultra who targeted George was off with his aim. The knife drove into his kidney. Initially, George was more concerned with his son and did not realise it was anything other than a punch.

Helped up by his dad, Ian rose and stumbled across to two policemen who were sitting on the bonnet of a squad car some 20 yards away.

‘They’d seen it all,’ Ian said. In a few short steps, it was clear that George was losing a lot of blood. Ian gestured to the policeman to help.

He was shocked by the response. ‘The copper punched me in the nose,’ Ian said.

Farther down the road, another policeman reacted differently. He threw George into the back of a squad car and rushed to hospital. There, Ian recalled, ‘there were about 80 or 90 Liverpool fans all bleeding, lying all over the floor’. One by one they disappeared over the next few hours until he was alone. He was 17 years old in a world without mobile phones.

‘The doctors couldn’t speak English,’ he said. ‘There was a lot of head-shaking. A nun came in and the nurse sent her right across to me. She couldn’t speak English, either, but I was sure he’d died.’

For Ian, the nightmare continued until he was taken to see his father the next day after an operation. George had barely survived and it took him a long time to get back on his feet.

This was the worst story, but across Liverpool similar tales were being told and smaller scars and bruises displayed. None of us wanted to see another Italian again. But, by God, if we did, we’d be ready for them next time.

• 364 days later, Liverpool played Juventus at Heysel Stadium. The story of that day is told here. No one thought in terms of revenge. But we were still angry, suspicious and not willing to give the ultras any leeway