Heysel dead finally honoured 20 years on
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-01 09:43

Twenty years on, the 39 victims of the Heysel Stadium disaster are finally to be commemorated with a fitting monument at the site of the tragedy where they died.

The dilapidated Heysel Stadium, the venue for the 1985 European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool, has long since been torn down and replaced by the King Baudouin Stadium, venue for Belgium's matches in Euro 2000.

Until now, however, the only memorial to those who died has been a small plaque near the section that collapsed.

That will change when the memorial is unveiled on May 29, the 20th anniversary of the disaster, bringing to a close another sorry chapter in one of soccer's darkest histories.

The monument will be a 60-metre square sundial sculpture incorporating a light inset for each of the 39 fans who died.

The sculpture's designer, Frenchman Patrick Rimoux, said the stainless steel monument outside the stadium would incorporate Italian and Belgian stone and an English poem to mark the sorrow of the three nations.

"It's to commemorate the tragedy and to say, 'don't forget'," Rimoux told Reuters.

COLLAPSED WALL

The 39 victims, mostly Italians and including French and Belgian fans and one Briton, died after a wall collapsed following a charge by Liverpool supporters before the match.

English clubs were subsequently barred from European club competition for five years and Liverpool for a further year.

The quarter-final draw for this season's Champions League, pitting Liverpool against Juventus for the first time since Heysel, has stirred up memories of the tragedy.

The detailed design for the monument would be revealed at a news conference this month, Rimoux said. It will be engraved with English poet W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues", which was used in the film "Four Weddings and a Funeral".

A spokeswoman for the Brussels mayor's office confirmed a newspaper report that the sculpture would cost close to 200,000 euros ($263,600) but gave no further details.

The memorial will not only be a lasting reminder of the victims of the tragedy but will also acknowledge the old stadium, which for many years until it began to decline in the 1970s was the pride and joy of the city.

Opened in 1930 in Heysel, a district of north-west Brussels, it celebrated 100 years of Belgian independence from the Dutch.

Originally known as the Stade du Centenaire, it was set in a glorious Parc des Expositions and in its early years staged many soccer games - as well as gymnastic displays, Roman Games, hot air ballooning and athletics championships - and more European Cup finals than any other stadium.

WALL REBUILT

The stadium gradually fell into disrepair, however, despite a modernisation programme in the 1970s, because of plans to replace it.

That eventually happened, but not in circumstances the Belgian authorities had ever dreamed of.

The wall that collapsed was rebuilt soon afterwards and, to the distaste of many, the dilapidated Heysel continued to host sporting events until August 1994, with nothing to mark the tragedy.

After the 1994 Ivo Van Damme Memorial athletics meeting, the bulldozers moved in to transform Heysel into King Baudouin Stadium. It was inaugurated 12 months later with a friendly soccer match between Belgium and Germany.

In his book "The Football Grounds of Europe", published in 1990, author and architect Simon Inglis wrote how surprising it was that the wall that collapsed on the night of the disaster was rebuilt in its original form soon afterwards.

"Just as surprising," he wrote, "there was not a single memorial or reminder of the tragedy, not even the smallest of plaques, to honour the 39 victims.

"If the rest of the world remembers May 29 1985, it was as if the authorities at Heysel had determined to wipe it from their memory.

"As a consequence visiting that corner of the stadium where the deaths occurred was an eerie experience. It was all so, so ordinary."

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