We played cricket, but all we thought about was Heysel
Every picture tells a story, so it is said, but not every photograph can tell the whole story every time.
Sometimes there is only a fragment of a much larger, unseen picture, and so it is with this seemingly happy snap from a foreign football tour, england’s trip to Mexico in the summer of 1985.
This may have been taken during a carefree few hours for Bobby robson’s squad, a bit of cricket designed to relax players and take minds off the purpose of the visit, which was for england to acclimatize to the Mexican heat and humidity for the following year’s World Cup finals.
Serious matches were to be played — against Italy, Mexico and West Germany — and at the end of a long domestic season robson understood the value of tired legs requiring a break.
Hence the major item on the itinerary on the first full day of the tour was to settle into the team hotel in Mexico City and for the squad to watch the 1985 european Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. A great game was anticipated.
‘We sat in our luxurious hotel waiting expectantly for kick- off,’ robson recalled, ‘but, oddly, the screen remained blank with no explanation for 90 minutes after the final should have kicked off.
‘News began to filter through of fighting between the fans but we dismissed as exaggeration reports of deaths. Our reaction seemed to be justified when the game finally started . . . [but] when the players began ringing home at half-time the awful truth emerged.’
Thirty- nine people died at Heysel. The human tragedy was immense, scandalous.
The ramifications for english football paled beside this. english clubs were banned from europe for five years, but for robson the impact was more immediate: there were calls for the england tour to be cancelled and for england to be shut out of Mexico 86.
robson said he ‘could understand the revulsion of the world against us’.
A mild, traditional Geordie patriot, robson was personally offended by english hooliganism. He raged against the far-right malevolence which had attached itself to the england team — ‘the scum of the earth,’ as he put it, ‘the so-called National Front’.
england’s first opponents on the tour were Italy. Would — could — Italy face england as 32 Italians lay dead? (Seven of the victims came from Belgium, France and Ireland).
robson feared a chasm between england and Italy as countries and wanted the game to go ahead. ‘Fortunately,’ he said, ‘the Italian coach enzo Bearzot was in agreement.’
There was a week between Heysel and the Italy game.
‘There was a memorial mass which we went to with the Italian players,’ remembers Dave Watson. ‘There was a big turnout and both sets of players put their feelings into that.’
Watson was 23 at the time, a Norwich City centre half with three caps. He was a Liverpudlian, who had been with Liverpool before Norwich and would later become captain of everton.
‘It was absolutely tragic,’ Watson says. ‘People losing their lives going to a game of football, it shouldn’t happen. I come from just off Scotland road in Liverpool and I was at Liverpool as a young player, played for Liverpool reserves. you felt it.’
england versus Italy went ahead. But the atmosphere around the tour was sombre and in the Azteca Stadium, which held more than 100,000, there were only 8,000 present. Italy won 2- 1, Mark Hateley scoring for england with a header from a John Barnes cross.
Hateley was one of three englishmen in the team then playing in Serie A, ray Wilkins and Trevor Francis the others. It added to the poignancy. Three days later england lost 1-0 to Mexico and three days after that they defeated West Germany 3-0 — Bryan robson and Kerry Dixon, twice, scoring.
In between, a cricket match was organised. Watson does not recall too much, though he has the picture at home. ‘I think the cricket was a just a little bit of fun,’ he says, ‘maybe a bit of Pr in it too. I must have been roped in because I’m not a cricketer. Gary Lineker was a decent cricketer, wasn’t he? He was good at everything.’
england left Mexico for Los Angeles, where they defeated USA 5-0. Meanwhile, ‘a great deal of lobbying’ was undertaken by the Football Association according to robson. It kept england in the 1986 World Cup.
They were back in the Azteca Stadium 12 months later. This time it was for a World Cup quarter-final against Argentina. There were 114,000 there, plus Diego Maradona.
For robson ‘memories of Heysel were still vivid’. If others did not, he remembered that while a cricket photograph was taken in sunshine, english football was in shadow.