Tragedy and Reform
Superga in 1949, Munich in 1958, Heysel and Bradford in 1985, Hillsborough in 1989. Each changed something, in aircraft safety, in stadium design, in policing, in how the game treats the people who watch it. The scenes here record what happened and what followed.
Part of Football
20 moments in this segment.
- - Newsreel of the Superga disaster. The Settimana Incom newsreel issued a week after 4 May 1949, covering the aircraft crash at Superga that killed the Torino team and the national mourning that followed. Held by the Istituto Luce archive, it is the contemporaneous Italian record of the disaster.
- - Newsreel from Munich, 1958. British Pathe newsreel filmed after the Munich air crash of February 1958, showing rescue work in the wreckage at the airport and the aftermath for Manchester United. It is the contemporary record of the day the Busby Babes side was destroyed.
- - BBC broadcast from Heysel, 1985. The BBC's coverage of the 1985 European Cup final at the Heysel stadium in Brussels, presented by Jimmy Hill, as a wall collapsed before kick-off and 39 people died. The broadcast shifts from a football night to a disaster in real time, and English clubs were banned from European competition afterwards.
- - Radio commentary from the Bradford City fire. The original local radio commentary as fire took hold in the main stand at Valley Parade during a match in May 1985. The recording captures the moment a routine broadcast becomes an emergency, and the disaster led directly to an inquiry into stadium safety and the fire regulations that followed.
- - The Bradford City fire. News footage from May 1985, when fire took hold in the wooden main stand at Valley Parade during a match and spread within minutes. The disaster forced a rethink of timber stands and stadium safety across the English game.
- - Match of the Day on the day of Hillsborough. The broadcast from 15 April 1989, in which a football programme became live coverage of a disaster as it emerged how many people had died at the FA Cup semi-final. It is a contemporaneous record of a day that changed English stadiums.
- - Survivors of Hillsborough speak. A Carlton television documentary in which people who were caught in the crush on the Leppings Lane terrace at Hillsborough in April 1989 describe what happened to them. Rarely seen first-hand testimony recorded years before the inquest findings that overturned the official account.
- - The Busby Babes: End of a Dream. A full-length television documentary about the young Manchester United side of the 1950s and the air crash at Munich on 6 February 1958 that killed players, staff and journalists travelling with the team. It combines period footage with the recollections of those connected to the club, and traces how United rebuilt afterwards.
- - Panorama on Hillsborough. A BBC Panorama investigation into how the official account of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster was constructed and how blame was shifted onto Liverpool supporters. It sets out the documentary evidence behind the long campaign by the bereaved families for a new inquest.
- - How Heysel changed football. A documentary on the 1985 Heysel disaster and its consequences: the ban on English clubs in Europe, the state of the stadiums, and the policing and crowd control of the period. It places the night in the wider story of 1980s football rather than treating it in isolation.
- - Anatomy of the Hillsborough disaster. The Guardian's David Conn reconstructs the crush at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989 using footage released for the inquest, showing how the crowd was funnelled into the Leppings Lane pens. Published as the jury returned its verdict, twenty-seven years after the disaster.
- - How the day unfolded at Hillsborough. BBC News sets out the sequence of events at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989, from the build-up outside the ground to the crush on the terrace. Reported at the point the inquest jury concluded that those who died were unlawfully killed and that the supporters were not to blame.
- - Flowers of Manchester. Manchester United players past and present, among them Denis Law, Eric Cantona and Gary Neville, read the ballad written after the Munich air crash. The poem has been the club's own form of remembrance for the players who died.
- - Munich, sixty years on. The Manchester Evening News film on the air crash of 6 February 1958, in which twenty-three people died on the way home from a European Cup tie in Belgrade, eight of them United players. It draws on the paper's own reporting of the days that followed.
- - The Superga crash. An Italian documentary on 4 May 1949, when the aircraft carrying the Grande Torino side struck the hillside basilica at Superga above Turin and the entire team was lost. Torino were the dominant club in Italy at the time, and much of the national side went with them.
- - Heysel and the ban on English clubs. An account of the disaster at the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels, where a wall collapsed after crowd trouble and many supporters died. It sets out how the events led to English clubs being banned from European competition and to a wider reckoning with stadium safety.
- - Hillsborough and the fight for the truth. An account of the crush at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough, in which 97 Liverpool supporters died, and of the decades families spent contesting the official version of events. It also covers the changes to stadium design and crowd control that followed.
- - Superga and the Grande Torino. An Italian-language account of 4 May 1949, when the aircraft carrying the Torino squad crashed into the Superga hill outside Turin. The team had dominated Italian football, and the disaster removed a side that also made up much of the national team.
- - Survivors of the Munich Air Crash Recall That Day. First-hand accounts from people who lived through the crash at Munich-Riem airport on 6 February 1958, when the aircraft carrying the Manchester United team failed to take off. The testimony covers the flight, the aftermath in Munich and what the loss meant to the club and to English football.
- - The Hillsborough Disaster. A documentary on the crush at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989, during an FA Cup semi-final, in which Liverpool supporters died. It covers the failures of stadium design and crowd management, the false accounts published afterwards, and the decades-long campaign by the families that eventually overturned them.
