Football produces emotion all the time. Every weekend in fact.
And what a supporter is moved by generally depends on what matters
to them at a given moment – in their day, in their week, even in their lives.
But the game also produces occasions which transcend the sport, cutting
through rivalries and creating memories which last well beyond the importance of a sport.
And while not ranked or even close to an exhaustive list,
Tifo has gathered some of those together, to remember why they mattered.
First, a few emotional moments that any credible list can’t be without.
Lionel Messi finally leading Argentina to an international trophy, and the 2021 Copa
America. Marco Tardelli celebrating after scoring in the 1982 World Cup Final belongs
too and has become the conveyance of what it means to score an important goal on the biggest stage.
Stuart Pearce showed something similar. In 1990, Pearce missed one of the penalties that saw
England eliminated in the World Cup semi-final in Turin. Six years later, against Spain at Euro’96,
Pearce stepped up in a shootout again. This time, he rifled his penalty inside the post
and a whole nation felt his relief, as Pearce celebrated with a guttural howl.
For Roberto Baggio, it was different. He was caught in one of the loneliest photos ever
taken after he missed the decisive penalty in the shootout at the end of the 1994 World Cup
Final. Baggio had been one of the best players at the tournament and yet, in the seconds after
sending his spot-kick soaring over the crossbar, he stood forlornly and alone on the penalty spot
as the triumphant Brazilian players celebrated all around him.
These are all worthy entries and none of them are benign, but we’re going somewhere
different – to football’s responses to the deepest and darkest adversity,
and to the moments that emerged from those shadows.
And to start with, back to 1968 and the European Cup Final.
Ten years before, the Munich Air Disaster claimed the lives of 23 people,
including eight Manchester United players, who were returning from
Yugoslavia after the quarter-finals of the European Cup against Red Star Belgrade.
The accident would decimate Matt Busby’s side and left Busby himself critically wounded.
He would recover, though, and so would Manchester United. Ten years later, with a team built around
crash survivors Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes, but by which time included George Best and Dennis
Law, Busby and Manchester United would finally capture the trophy to which they’d lost so much.
In November 2016, on their way to the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final,
the plane carrying the Brazilian team Chapecoense crashed in Colombia,
with only three players surviving, Alan Ruschel, Jakson Follmann and Neto.
9 months later, after their teammates and coach had been buried and the world had watched them
mourn, those three were at Camp Nou to play Barcelona in the Catalan club’s traditional
friendly. Neto and Follmann didn’t play in the game but performed a ceremonial kick-off.
Alan Ruschel, however, managed to play almost an entire half in his first appearance since the
tragedy, before being substituted to a thunderous standing ovation from every corner of the ground.
At the 1989 FA Cup Final, fate brought Liverpool and Everton together.
It had been Liverpool’s run to the FA Cup semi-finals that took them to Hillsbrough
to face Nottingham Forest, before and during which one of the worst stadium
disasters in history would claim the lives of 97 Liverpool fans.
Five weeks later, carrying an impossible burden, Liverpool were at Wembley in the final.
The game was a classic, with Liverpool winning 3-2 after extra-time,
but the afternoon is really remembered for Gerry Marsden of Gerry & the Pacemakers
leading the crowd in a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone and the great
show of solidarity between the two halves of Merseyside, bound by an unspeakable tragedy.
In March 2012, Fabrice Muamba collapsed at White Hart Lane,
in an FA Cup replay between Tottenham and Bolton. Miraculously, despite his heart stopping for 78
minutes, Muamba survived and recovered. He would retire from professional football that summer,
but in November that year, at half-time of a Europa League game between Spurs and Maribor,
he was introduced back on to the pitch to tearfully take the crowd’s applause.
More recently, Euro2020 nearly ended in tragedy, when Christian Eriksen collapsed at the beginning
of Denmark’s group game with Finland. The image that went around the world was of
the Danish team linking arms and encircling their teammate so that he could be treated
with a modicum of privacy. And everyone knows that his story had a happy ending:
Eriksen survived, made a remarkable recovery and was able to resume his playing career.
But before that, before anyone knew what would follow, the abiding memory will always be the
resilience of the Danish players – particularly nine days after Eriksen’s collapse, when they
took on Russia back in Copenhagen, and produced a magnificent performance, winning 4-1 within in
front of a frenzied crowd and within earshot of their stricken playmaker’s hospital bedroom.
It was an enormously touching moment.
Mercifully rare, like the others on this list, but another time when football showed its best side.