FORGIVENESS IS A ONE WAY STREET ON MERSEYSIDE

Isn’t it funny how scousers expect Juve to forgive the deaths of their fellow supporters through a couple of airy fairy banners? Where’s the forgiveness and “friendship” shown towards the Sun newspaper for its (admittedly repulsive) coverage of Hillsborough?

Whatever the Sun did they weren’t actually responsible for anyone’s death that day yet scousers refuse to forgive, even with the offer of an apology and for the Sun to campaign on their behalf. Hypocrisy is ingrained in the very being of scousers though I guess.

Whilst SMAC may be out of control, Simon Barnes writes in The Times:

THE greatest manufacturer of tension in modern football is the minute’s silence. You can forget the penalty shoot-out, extra time, silver goals and golden goals. It is that ghastly moment when the silence begins and you wait for some fool to shatter it. Silence is the most extraordinary sound a sporting arena can produce; and sometimes, nerve-janglingly, nerve-tinglingly, you find it at a football match when both sides respect the need for a brief, godless prayer.

There was a deep need for some kind of prayer at Anfield last night, when Liverpool took on Juventus, the first time the sides had played each other since that hellish night 20 years ago when 39 Juventus fans were killed at Heysel stadium in Brussels. A caprice of the probability laws brought them together for this quarter-final of the European Cup.

Both sides would have preferred to duck it. After all, this is an issue that no one has really wanted to talk about. It is a silence that has lasted 20 years, and it ended more or less when the referee blew his whistle to ask for quiet.

There had been reports that the travelling Italian fans had not been in a conciliatory mood at all. They were not, it seems, prepared to play the part that Liverpool — the club, the fans, the city — had prepared for them. They had been sulky, aggressive, surly: in short, unforgiving.

As the whistle-blast for silence sounded, the fans at the Kop end all performed a choreographed card stunt. Red and white cards, Liverpool colours, but carrying a message in Italian: amicizia. Friendship. This prompted an instant rustling of applause, but that was at once followed by catcalls and derisive gestures.

Even before that, some of the more hard-nosed Juventus fans had pointedly turned their backs on the orchestrated friendliness that was coming their way. Perhaps these Liverpool gestures seemed to them too little, too sentimental, too well stage-managed and, above all, too late.

Liverpool have always had a taste for mushy sentiment, as shown by the uninhibited zest with which they sing their great godless hymn, You’ll Never Walk Alone. The phrase is repeated on the gateway to the club and it was translated into Italian in yet another gesture of friendship. But Juventus didn’t buy it. One Juventus fan held up a sign saying “No Fear”, another, perhaps accusingly, “Martina Vive” or Martina lives.

The Liverpool Echo yesterday carried on its front page the names of all those killed in the tragedy, under the headline “We’re sorry”. The wording of its brief editorial was uncompromising. It was emotionally right, non-mushy, and it was factually and morally correct. “The Liverpool fans who charged at the Italian fans in Belgium were shamefully to blame,” the paper said. “No ifs, no buts, no excuses.”

Liverpool, or sections of it — club, fans, people of — have lived in denial of this simple truth for 20 years. It wasn’t their fault that a wall collapsed, after all. And the invading fans weren’t trying to kill anybody. They were just trying to hurt, humiliate and terrify people. And that, really, is not murder; it’s just nasty.