Soccer and Disaster

Soccer and Disaster A sending off; the conceding of a vital goal; an untimely defeat – disaster is a much used term in sport. Yet soccer has also been the victim of real disasters: events where people lost their lives. But when compared to tragedies such as the Munich air disaster and Heysel Stadium disaster, of course the results of games become insignificant. Football is not more important than life or death. This book looks at soccer disasters from across the globe. From the loss of talented young players in air crashes in Munich and Zambia, to fatal overcrowding in Johannesburg and Sheffield – the game, its fans and players have been the victims of negligence, complacency and misfortune. The causes, consequences and legacies of these and other disasters are explored here in a book that reveals frightening parallels and important lessons. This was first published as a special issue of journal Soccer and Society which was entitled ‘Soccer and Disaster’. Paul Darby is a lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown. He has written widely on Africa’s place in FIFA’S global order. He was Academic Editor of the International Journal, Soccer and Society between 2000–2005 and is currently a member of the journals editorial board. Martin Johnes is a lecturer at St Martin’s College, Lancaster. He has written widely on both sports history and disasters. Gavin Mellor is a lecturer at Coventry University and the University of Central Lancashire, and currently lectures at Liverpool Hope University College in the Sociology of Sport. He is currently Senior Reviews Editor for the International Journal, Soccer and Society. Soccer and Disaster Paul Darby, Martin Johnes & Gavin Mellor London and New York First published 2005 by Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2005 Paul Darby, Martin Johnes & Gavin Mellor All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data a catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-49666-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-58290-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-714-65352-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-714-68289-6 (pbk) This book is dedicated to all those who have lost their lives in football disasters around the world. CONTENTS Notes on the Contributors viii INTRODUCTION Football Disasters: A Conceptual Frame PAUL DARBY, MARTIN JOHNES, GAVIN MELLOR 1 1 ‘Heads in the Sand’: Football, Politics and Crowd Disasters in Twentieth-Century Britain MARTIN JOHNES 10 2 ‘The Day was an Ugly One’: Wembley, 28th April 1923 JEFFREY HILL 28 3 The Ibrox Stadium Disaster of 1971 GRAHAM WALKER 45 4 Death on the Terraces: The Contexts and Injustices of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster PHIL SCRATON 59 5 ‘The Cursed Cup’: Italian Responses to the 1985 Heysel Disaster FABIO CHISARI 77 6 Not Just A Game: The Kayseri vs. Sivas Football Disaster YIG˘ IT AKIN 95 7 ‘Like Cows Driven to a Dip’: The 2001 Ellis Park Stadium Disaster in South Africa PETER ALEGI 109 8A Context of Vulnerability: The Zambian Air Disaster, 1993 PAUL DARBY 124 9 ‘The Flowers of Manchester’: The Munich Disaster and the Discursive Creation of Manchester United Football Club GAVIN MELLOR 141 10 Political and Social Fantasies in Peruvian Football: The Tragedy of Alianza Lima in 1987 ALDO PANFICHI AND VÍCTOR VICH 161 11 The Superga Disaster and the Death of the ‘great Torino’ PAUL DIETSCHY 174 Index 187 Notes on the Contributors Taylorfsasp000-000.sgmSoccer1466-0970Original200452000000Summer and& Article Francis (print)/1743-9590SocietyFrancis 2004 Ltd Ltd (online) Yiğit Akın is a research assistant at the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History at the Bogazici University (Istanbul/Turkey). His main interest is in the social and cultural history of the late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey. He is currently undertaking research on the development of sports and physical education in Turkey during the first half of the twentieth century. Peter Alegi is Assistant Professor of History and Co-Director of the African/ African-American Studies Program at Eastern Kentucky University, USA. He has lectured in African history at Harvard University and Boston University, and in sport history at Tufts University. He is the author of Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2004). Fabio Chisari, MA in Sports History and Culture, is a PhD student at De Mont- fort University of Leicester, working on a research project on a comparative history of football on TV in Britain and Italy. He has published various articles in specialized journals studying the relationship between sport and the media. Paul Darby is a lecturer in the sociology of sport at the University of Ulster (Jordanstown). He has written broadly on the relationship between Europe and Africa as mediated by football. He is the author of Africa, Football and FIFA: Politics, Colonialism and Resistance (London and Portland: Frank Cass, 2002), and was Academic Editor of the International Journal Soccer and Society between 2000–2005. He is currently a member of the journals editorial board and sits on the Advisory Board of ‘Impumelelo’: The Interdisciplinary Electronic Journal of African Sport. He received his doctorate from the University of Ulster in 1997. Paul Dietschy is Lecturer at the Franche-Comté University (Besançon, France). After his Ph.D. thesis on football and society in Turin, he has published articles on football history in France and in Italy during the fascist period. He has partic- ipated in the research and book for the FIFA Centennial with Tony Mason and Pierre Lanfranchi. He also co-manages the research seminar on sport, European societies and cultures at the Centre d’histoire de l’Europe du Vingtième Siècle (CHEVS) of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris). Jeff Hill is Professor of Historical and Cultural Studies at de Montfort Univer- sity. His Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain (Palgrave/ Macmillan) came out in 2002, and he is currently working on a study of the representation of sport in twentieth-century novel writing. Martin Johnes is a lecturer at St Martin’s College, Lancaster. He has written widely on both sports history and disasters. His publications include Aberfan: Government and Disasters (with Iain McLean, Welsh Academic Press, 2000) and Soccer and Society: South Wales, 1900–39 (University of Wales Press, 2002). Gavin Mellor has taught the sociology of sport at Coventry University, the University of Central Lancashire and Liverpool Hope University College. He is currently working at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests include football and differing levels of identity, including local, regional and national. He has published in a number of sports and non-sports academic journals and is currently Senior Reviews Editor for the international journal Soccer and Society. Aldo Panfichi has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, New York (USA). He is currently associate professor and researcher in the Department of Social Science and the Graduate School at the Universidad Catolica del Peru. His fields of research are football and popular culture, civil society and democracy in Latin America. Among his recent publications in the field of sports are co-authored with Jorge Thieroldt, ‘Identity and Rivalry: The Foot- ball Clubs and Barras Bravas of Perú’, in Futbol, Futebol, Soccer: Football in the Americas (ILAS, University of London, UK, forthcoming); co-authored with Jorge Thieroldt, ‘Barras Bravas: Representation and Crowd Violence in Peruvian Football’, in Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy and Ivan Waddington (eds), Fighting Fans: Football Hooliganism as a World Problem (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002); co-authored with Luis Millones and Victor Vich, En el Corazón del Pueblo: Pasión y gloria de Alianza Lima 1901-2001, Essays and Photo- graphs (Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2002). Phil Scraton is Professor of Criminology in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast. Until recently he was Professor and Director of the Centre for Studies in Crime and Social Justice at Edge Hill University College. His primary research includes: the regulation and criminalization of children and young people; controversial deaths and the state; the rights of the bereaved and survivors in the aftermath of disasters; the politics of truth and officical inquiry; critical analysis and its application. He is author of The State of the Police (Pluto, 1985) and Hillsborough: The Truth (Mainstream, 2000), co-author of In the Arms of the Law: Coroners’ Inquests and Deaths in Custody (Pluto, 1987), Prisons Under Protest (Open University Press, 1991) and No Last Rights: The Promotion of Myth and the Denial of Justice in the Aftermath of the Hills- borough Disaster (LCC/Alden Press, 1985), and editor of Causes for Concern: Criminal Justice on Trial (Penguin, 1984), Law, Order and the Authoritarian State: Readings in Critical Criminology (Open University Press, 1987), ‘Childhood’ in ‘Crisis’? (UCL Press, 1997) and Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent (Pluto, 2002).

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