Monument to Heysel football tragedy

18 March 2005

BRUSSELS – A memorial to the victims of the Heysel football disaster is to be built, it emerged on Friday.

La Derniere Heure reported that Brussels council is to spend EUR 193,600 to create a monument for the 20th anniversary of the 1985 tragedy.

On 29 May of that year, 39 people, mainly Italian football fans, were killed when fighting broke out at a match between Liverpool and Juventus.

The Roi Baudoin stadium in Heysel has not been used for football since the event which saw English football clubs banned for five years from taking part in European tournaments.

Liverpool was banned for an extra two years.

Light artist Patrick Rimoux, who planned the first illuminations of the Grand’Place in 2002 for Christmas and New Year, has been commissioned to create the memorial.

He said it would symbolise “the pain of the Italians, the Belgians and the English”.

“I am in the process of creating a 60 square metre football pitch from white stone from Italy, in which 39 lights will be embedded for all of the people who died in this tragedy,” he said.

The monument will also incorporate parts of blue stone from Belgium and a poem from British poet W.H Auden on the theme of death will be engraved in the stonework.

[Copyright Expatica 2005]

Subject: Belgian news