Seville puffed up last week to host 150,000 German or Scottish fans, only 40,000 with tickets. The fate of the others was to roam the streets in the shade at 38 degrees, drink a lot of beer and follow the game on a giant screen in one of the two prepared fan zones. Apart from a few fights in the afternoon of the game nothing happened. Four chairs flew, there was a bruise… That’s all.
To congratulate us. For those of us who are already past the sixth floor of our lives, a chill ran down our spines as we recalled the day Spain saw the dog face of hooligan violence
It happened at Camp Nou, where the Cup Winners’ Cup final was played against Dinamo Moscow and Glasgow Rangers. Dinamo brought the great Yashin as ambassador and 200 companions, trusted people from the nomenklatura who didn’t want to use the trip to escape. It’s different in Scotland, of course, where up to 15,000 fans with their shirts, hats and flags hung over the city, hungry for beer. Everything is colorful. Back then, it wasn’t customary for fans to wear their team shirts here, children were more likely to be given paper flags.
Hooligans were considered a rare and alien phenomenon. Every now and then there were reports in the press of a train being destroyed by fans somewhere in the UK, the pubs near the pitch were known to be closed on match days… But it sounded as far off as that cyclical floods in China.
The device was reduced to 60 shades of gray, which police officers of the time named after the color of their uniform. Tall, well planted, with her good club, accustomed in Francoist Spain to having her first command obeyed: (“Disband, do not form groups for me”). Some charge at the university, that’s all. They went to the football in small numbers, sat around the field on wooden stools and watched the game. When neighbors raised the tone of the discussion to the riot category, a couple approached them and took them away.
The Barça had no fences
Of these there were 60 for 15,000 Scots, mostly drunk. The game was good. Rangers were leading 3-2 with two minutes left when referee Ortiz de Mendivil ruled a foul on Rangers and some started jumping onto the field, perhaps to stop the serve, perhaps thinking the game was over . Barça had no fences, but a more elegant solution, a ditch 2 meters deep and another 2 meters wide. Off-putting, but someone young and daring enough could jump on it.
Many made it, others were weighed down by the years or the beer and ended up at the bottom. The Grays faced a growing avalanche: one against five, one against ten, one against twenty, one against fifty… They pulled hard, but for every fall came three. The first to join the fray, the boldest, drew knives or bicycle chains, their usual combat gear; the new broadcasts, less prepared in advance, jumped out, armed with the seats they had previously torn up or with bottles they had stolen from the stadium bars. They used the wooden benches in the lower tiers to build walkways and cross the moat.
The barbarism lasted two hours. The trophy could not be delivered as planned, but was handed over to the Rangers in the dressing rooms.
The lawn was leveled (many took pieces as souvenirs), littered with broken glass, strewn with chains and knives. Eighty-seven Scots and 20 police officers were injured, two deaths from heart attacks were reported, although in the end there was only one, the other being recovered in hospital. Only ten arrested.
That frightened the then prudish Spain. Barça kept half of the cash registers to repair seats and toilets and replant the lawn, according to UEFA. UEFA has mooted Dinamo Moscow’s request to award the title to the Russians, who denounced playing intimidated. The mayor of Glasgow sent an apology telegram to the mayor of Barcelona. Foreign Affairs presented a protest to the British Embassy over the attitude of fans and the tabloids’ version, which attributed the events to “the brutality of the Francoist police”. But both the serious English press and those of other countries with special envoys detested the fans’ attitude. Corriere della Sera came to ask “What would have happened if they had lost?”
It was May 24, 1972. Fifty years ago today.
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