I decided to write this while driving home from work on Tuesday. The previous night Man City had taken another big step towards the Premier League title by beating Leicester courtesy of a Vincent Kompany thunderbolt.
After that game, I was scouring Twitter and was struck by the negativity towards Liverpool. Exemplified by the hashtag: ‘#anyonebutLiverpool’.
Now, none of this is particularly new or ground-breaking if you are familiar with football-related Twitter. However, it got me thinking about where the negativity towards Liverpool comes from.
I think the ill feeling towards Liverpool stems mainly from two areas: Heysel and the resulting blanket ban of English clubs and a more general stereotyping of Liverpool and it’s inhabitants as criminally minded or work shy.
Examples of this ill-feeling in the media would be, at the lower end of the scale, Harry Enfield’s ‘Scousers’ from the ’90s or at a higher level the coverage by The Sun newspaper of the Hillsborough tragedy. It is seen more recently on Twitter or on the terraces from rival fans.
No one would argue that Liverpool fans came out well from the Heysel tragedy, even given the shoddy state of the stadium and the poorly organised ticket allocations. Some Juventus fans innocently went to enjoy a football match and lost their lives. Something that can never be rectified.
What hasn’t been analysed as far as I am aware and crossed my mind this week is – were UEFA right to blanket ban all English football clubs for five years? Should only Liverpool have received the ban and would that have changed how negatively the club is viewed currently amongst some supporters of other clubs?
It’s true that English football did have a problem with hooliganism for decades and it wasn’t limited to any particular club. This would have helped sway the decision on the ban. Would there have been further tragedies involving other clubs in Europe had Liverpool been the only club to receive the ban? A lot of questions that are hard to answer with complete certainty.
UEFA’s ban did coincide with an improvement in fan behaviour for which we can all be very thankful. That plus cultural changes taking place in the late ’80s and early ’90s caused hooliganism to become less and less appealing if not yet obsolete. Sadly it occasionally rears its ugly head even up to the present day.
Should the current generation of Liverpool fans be blamed for events from the mid-eighties? I would argue that they shouldn’t.
More generally this is the problem of conflict and vengeance. Fans just like others in every walk of life remember hurts and store grievances and so the negativity becomes cyclical.
I’m now completing this article basking in the glow of an unforgettable night where Liverpool overcame the odds and trounced Barcelona to reach a Champions League final for the second year running. Fans, coaching staff and the team came together to make it happen wonderfully.
