Mark Lawrenson on English European Cup dominance, Heysel tragedy and aftermath

On Saturday, a sixth English football team may etch their name on the famous European Cup trophy.

Manchester City are just one win away from joining England's elite who have managed to win Europe's elite competition, with Inter standing in their way in Istanbul at the weekend.

Most of the other English clubs who've won the European Cup enjoyed their maiden victory in the tournament during a real golden period for the game in England in the late 70s and early 80s. In that period, teams from England managed to win seven of nine European Cups, including six in a row between 1977 and 1982.

That period of unrivalled dominance would come to an abrupt end on 29th May 1985 however when, prior to Liverpool's European Cup final clash with Juventus, Reds fans' charge at Juve fans resulted in the death of 39 people and injuries to hundreds more. In the aftermath, English football teams were banned indefinitely from European competition - a ban that would be rescinded after five years.

To discuss the events of that day at Heysel Stadium and English football's prior dominance of the European game, 90min sat down with Reds legend Mark Lawrenson, who was playing for Liverpool at the time of the events:

On English teams' European dominance in the early 80s

"We basically had the best players. And I also think that our league in those days, although we dominated for a while, was actually a very tough league.

"The point I'm making is, you know that Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid will always finish top of La Liga, so their competition was basically easier to win whereas we'd go to clubs at the bottom of our division and it'd be really, really tough [to win].

"When you have so many difficult games that makes you better and, what it effectively does, is make you come up with different ways to win matches.

"We at Liverpool were basically used to these high leverage games when we played in Europe."

On Heysel tragedy

"On the bus on the way there was obviously a massive amount of traffic - we didn't have a police escort or anything like that. We stopped on a road in traffic and we looked to our left, and I remember seeing a big park in which there was an impromptu game of football being played. It was Juventus fans vs. Liverpool fans, with sweaters for goal posts and all that. We were watching that and thought 'this will all be good'.

"And then when we got to the stadium, we started to hear the rumours about what was happening.

"After a while, Joe Fagan stopped everybody from going out [onto the pitch]. And then Fagan and Phil Neal, who was the captain, went out to speak to the supporters. They were drowned out, they were booed, and then obviously we started to understand that people had died.

"The chief of police for the game then came into our dressing room and said that the game was going ahead and we all, to a man, said that we were not playing when people were dying. He was adamant that we were playing the game so we asked what the Juventus players had said, and he told us that they too had said they weren't playing the game.

"He said that he could not be responsible for what happens if the game didn't kick off. Whatever he said to him, it didn't make any difference.

We didn't know how many people had died, but we knew the incident was right by our dressing room.

"I remember struggling to play. I had dislocated my shoulder about two weeks before, and that was the second time I'd done that. I was going to have an operation on it in Liverpool at the end of the season. I came out and lasted, I don't know, about three minutes because after I tackled Michel Platini I went to ground and jarred my arm and my shoulder came out again.

"All I can remember about that then was walking off and I suddenly started crying and I think that was because of the whole kind of experience of what had happened, and the fact that I felt a bit stupid because I felt like I left the team down because I only lasted three minutes.

"I'm then taken to hospital [due to the injury], and it was the hospital where they'd brought the fans who were injured or had died at the game. I was taken straight into the operating theater. I still had my boots on and my kit and everything.

"When I woke up from the operation I was quite groggy and I was in a ward, and at the end of my bed there was a soldier with a machine gun. I double checked, he looked at me and I looked at him, he didn't speak any English but he basically told me to stay where I was.

"One of the nurses came in and she asked if I remembered what'd happened [at the stadium].

"When we got to the airport later [after I was discharged] I remember fans were spitting on us and everything but it was understandable [after what had happened]."

On if Liverpool would've continued to dominate European football

"I don't know if we'd have dominated, but I think we certainly would have appeared in the finals.

"The other thing would be that Everton were becoming a really, really good side. So you'd argue that, yes, we missed out but they seriously missed out as well. But yeah, look, it is what it is, the bad at the time was supposed to be indefinite and obviously that was changed.

"You know, I think we all felt guilty [about Heysel] and the fact that we were the club associated with that and the European football ban."

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