‘THE MATCH THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN CALLED OFF KILLED MY FATHER’
THE LAST TIME ATLETICO VISITED ANFIELD, COVID WAS TAKING HOLD BUT FOOTBALL PLOUGHED ON... WITH HEARTBREAKING RESULTS
IT was all one big joke to atletico Madrid’s Diego Costa, who deliberately coughed on journalists as he walked past them on the way out of anfield that night.
But time would show it was no laughing matter and that, even by his standards, Costa’s actions were particularly despicable.
Liverpool’s last home game against atletico Madrid, which took place against the gathering storm of Covid, should never have been played at all.
The morning newspapers that day — wednesday, March 11, 2020 — revealed the escalating scale of the crisis. La Liga had decided on the Tuesday to put every game behind closed doors.
Madrid side Getafe had given up waiting for UEFa to make a decision about European football and refused to travel to Italy to face Inter Milan in the Europa League. ‘If we have to lose the tie we will,’ said their president angel Torres.
Madrid had become a centre of the pandemic, El Pais reporting 55 deaths and 22,000 confirmed cases across spain by the night of the match. schools were shut, streets deserted, restaurants and bars empty.
English football’s approach, directed by UK Government advice, was ‘keep calm and carry on’.
a former director of public health for North west England, John ashton flew into Heathrow at 6.50 that morning on an overnight flight from Bahrain, where he’d been asked to advise on the country’s response to Covid. By the time his 8am connecting shuttle to Manchester had landed, he had decided that using his Liverpool season ticket to attend the atletico game would be madness.
‘It was reading the newspapers that made my mind up,’ he says. ‘I was thinking: “This is mad”.’
Ordinary fans were not so well informed. Richie Mawson had been watching Liverpool for 63 years and considered European nights under the lights better than any. a healthy 70-year-old, he was in the gym twice a week.
without any strong advice to the contrary, he set out on the 15-minute walk from his home in Kirkdale, across stanley Park, through the away fan concourse where hundreds of the 3,000 spanish contingent were already gathering by 6.30pm, and into the ground.
The spanish Government had asked atletico to advise fans not to travel. But UEFa had not cancelled the game, the UK Government had neither asked them to nor imposed restrictions on visiting fans.
Liverpool felt that deciding not to play the game could have resulted in sanctions or even disqualification from the Champions League. Their position was that the game was run and ‘owned’ by UEFa, who were taking safety advice from the UK Government.
after the match, which saw Liverpool defeated 3-2 and eliminated from the competition, Richie Mawson called son Jamie for their usual post-match debrief and was in good spirits when he called into the Barlow arms for a post-match pint.
as he sat in the pub, ashton was appearing on Newsnight.
‘I’m tearing my hair out really with this,’ he told Emily Maitlis. ‘You’ve got 3,000 supporters in town, staying overnight in
Liverpool, drinking in the bars, and a proportion of those will be corona-positive. we will now have people being infected tonight in Liverpool because of that.’
Jamie says his dad developed flu-like symptoms a few days afterwards. ‘The doctor said: “It doesn’t look like Covid. I’ll give him antibiotics for a heavy cold’’,’ he recalled.
By april 2, he was finding it such a struggle to breathe he was taken to hospital. The ambulance crew put him on oxygen and were ready to stretcher him out, though he was determined to walk, holding the oxygen canister. wife Mary gave him a £10 note. ‘That’s to get a taxi back,’ she said. It would be the last the family saw him.
when Richie phoned his son the next day, the conversation was brief. ‘I’ll have to go,’ he said. ‘I can’t breathe.’
The following day, he was on a ventilator and remained so for more than two weeks.
The family’s last sight of him was a video call on a nurse’s iPad. He was unconscious when she turned the screen around for them to see him.
‘we were shouting to wake him up,’ says Jamie. ‘It looked like he’d already died.’ a nurse promised to hold his hand through the night. Richie died about 3am.
as Liverpool face atletico once more tonight, there is a reluctance from those in authority to speak about the decision to stage the 2020 game. Sportsmail’s attempts to speak to Liverpool’s director of public health, Matt ashton, son of John ashton, met with an immediate refusal from Liverpool City Council.
Parts of the council are currently under the control of government commissioners, sent in after an emergency inspection found a ‘serious breakdown of governance’.
we were told it would be inappropriate for anyone from the council to discuss an issue which might point to government blame at such a time.
Ex-Liverpool mayor Joe anderson commissioned an inquiry and believes the game should never have proceeded. Neither does steve Rotherham, metro mayor of the Liverpool city region, who reckons it went ahead as part of a policy of ‘herd immunity’ the government were pursuing at the time. a joint report by the House of Commons Health and science select committees this month found an additional 37 deaths occurred at local hospitals after the game. It is not clear whether they were as a result of attending the match or associated travel and congregation in pubs.
Liverpool FC declined to comment on how close they came to putting the game on behind closed doors. The Covid-19 Families for Justice Group are fighting to ensure the decision to allow mass gatherings like the atletico game to go ahead must form part of next april’s public inquiry into the pandemic.
John ashton supports that. ‘There was talk about all fans pointing in the same direction and only being in stadiums for a few hours,’ he says. ‘Unbelievable. There were thousands of visitors in town for 24 hours. People in bars rubbing shoulders. It wasn’t a genteel trip to the opera we’re talking about.’
Jamie is still looking for answers. ‘I hold the government accountable,’ he says. ‘Dad was 70 when he died and not an old 70. If that game had not gone ahead, he’d still be with us now.’