In an article titled ‘Manchester United to ‘educate’ fans on Hillsborough after offensive chants at Anfield’ by The Athletic, the post had a paragraph which read: ‘The Hillsborough disaster happened on April 15, 1989, at an FA Cup match between Sheffield Wednesday and Liverpool‘.
The article has now been corrected to the correct opponents (Nottingham Forest) and amended but the two main issues in all of this are that:
1) The article has to be written in the first place.
2) Even on a piece about the event, people don’t know the full truth.
Anyone writing full-time will have made mistakes (this writer very much included) and this is in no way a slight at Luke Bosher for his post, indeed highlighting a lack of education around the Hillsborough Stadium disaster is very important and should be encouraged.
The issue is that this needs to be written at all, we are now 33 years away from the terrible day that saw 97 Liverpool supporters unlawfully killed and so a whole new generation of supporters are going the game without knowledge of what truly happened.
Our fans have their own families to rely on to be informed of the truth about what occurred but the growth in abhorrent slurs from opposition teams on a weekly basis is becoming sickeningly frequent.
For the club’s website to release a statement, it shows how far the perception of the disaster is going back to what was first reported in the 1980s.
With both Manchester clubs embarrassing themselves and showing a lack of compassion in the space of four days, the work of the Hillsborough families is being forgotten and the truth seems to no longer matter.
People need to be held accountable for their actions but more importantly, football people need to be calling this out and educating fans on what they’re signing about.
What happened in Sheffield isn’t a Liverpool Football Club thing, it’s a social battle against the people in power trying to convince everyone that our fans were to blame.
Years of battling for truth and justice hasn’t reach other clubs and places in this country, they still don’t know that we were in no way to blame for the deaths of our supporters.
When will the FA react with proper sanctions for these chants?
When will Sky, BT and the BBC call fans out during match broadcasts?
When will we see the correct education provided so that this all stops once and for all?
You can view screenshots of the original article from The Athletic via @LFCAlert on Twitter:
Also, maybe @TheAthletic needs to educate itself on the Hillsborough Disaster. Liverpool didn't play Sheffield Wednesday. Embarrassing pic.twitter.com/uyhUGpuarl
— LFC Alert 1️⃣9️⃣ (@LFCAlert) April 20, 2022
#Ep44 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: UEFA failing fans, will we blow away Everton?… and more!