Twenty years later and with "hundreds of thousands of soccer fans passing through Liverpool's Anfield stadium every season, the memories remain" of the 96 men, women and children who were crushed to death in "the country's worst sports disaster," on April 15, 1989, a "day that irrevocably changed English soccer."
"Time has gone by, but the scars will never ever be healed," said Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, whose 10-year-old cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley was the youngest fatality at the Liverpool-Nottingham Forest FA Cup semifinal at the neutral home of Sheffield Wednesday.
Inevitably, the sadness from that day shared time with an anger that "as 2,000 more fans surged into the central pens in the Leppings Lane end, police failed to ease congestion by cutting off access or opening exit gates" and "appeals for a delayed kickoff went unheeded," according to the AP. "It should never have happened. It's as easy as that," says former Liverpool striker John Aldridge.