Twenty years after 96 men, women and children, all Liverpool fans, were crushed to death at the start of the English FA Cup semifinal at Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium, Rob Hughes reports that a lot has changed in English soccer.
The death traps that were English stadiums with standing sections and movable metal fences are gone. They are now among the most modern soccer stadiums in the world with seats for every fan and closed-circuit surveillance cameras to monitor everyone’s movement.
The new stadiums have made watching English soccer safer, but they have changed the nature of English soccer. John Aldridge, who played for Liverpool in the 1989 Hillsborough game, says “football died in a certain way that day. Look at the stadiums, they are fantastic. But football for that generation just stopped, and we’ve got a different type of football now.”