Former Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has criticized police and officials for a failure to delay the kick-off in the build-up to the Hillsborough disaster.
Ninety-six Liverpool fans were crushed to death at Hillsborough, Sheffield Wednesday’s home ground, during an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989.
Dalglish, Liverpool’s boss at the time, has spoken out for the first time in a television documentary scheduled to be broadcast on the 20th anniversary of one of the worst tragedies ever witnessed at a British soccer ground.
A failure to control the flow of spectators onto a terrace where fans were standing was cited as a key factor in the disaster, but Dalglish said this could have been avoided.
“The easiest thing to do is just to put the kick-off back a bit,” Dalglish told Hillsborough Remembered, to be broadcast on the History Channel on April 15.
“That’s no problem for anybody,” former Scotland striker Dalglish, one of Liverpool’s greatest players, added.
“If the police are talking to the FA [Football Association] and the FA have got to make that call, there wouldn’t have been any resentment or disagreement with the people in the dressing room, neither Brian Clough [then manager of Forest] or ourselves certainly,” he said. “It’s something that everybody wished had never happened, but I think it’s also something that nobody should forget.”
Dalglish, who attended dozens of funerals of the victims, added: “We made sure somebody with Liverpool connections was at every funeral and I think the families really respected that.”
“The boys weren’t obtrusive in any way, they sat back and let the families get on with the grieving, but they were there, their presence was there, but they didn’t need to have anybody coming up and telling them how grateful they were to have been there; they were there because they wanted to be there,” he said.
Terracing was banned at major soccer grounds in England after the Hillsborough disaster, prompting a move to all-seater stadiums.
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