[Portman]

The Milan-Liverpool link

(IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/Hillsborough_disaster_aftermath.jpg)

Here we are in 1989:

It was just four days after Hillsborough tragedy where 96 Liverpool fans died ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster ) and Milan were playing Real Madrid in a European Cup semi-final at the San Siro.

As the match is going on the referee blows his whistle and the whole ground falls silent before a ripple of applause rings out.

Then, and this is the bit which will never fail to move me, the Milan supporters start singing You'll Never Walk Alone in honour of the Liverpool fans (dead).

I'd always wanted to see it again because I think it is one of the most magnificent displays of solidarity between fans that there has ever been: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZrVfMRyoE0

A wonderful gesture by Curva Sud. Sometimes it's good to remember that life is much more important than football.

And the friendship between Milan and Liverpool has been present throughout history despite Istanbul, Athens, etc.

[Tennie]

I don't normally resurrect old threads but I just found an explanation behind the singing in the youtube clip of the Milan-Madrid game.

Thanks to the kind folks on RB Forums for the very good translation of the original story, taken from a minibook published by Brigate (see link at bottom).

There's a english song, that we currently sing in Curva Sud, which is the Liverpool traditional anthem and it's from 60..It says:

Walk on walk on
with hope in your heart
and you'll never walk alone
you'll never walk alone

There was a guy, in our group (tells the narrator) that had a record with all these songs, and he was froma group which isn't used to use magaphones: the songs in that group starts spontaneously..In this record there was this *You'll never walk alone*, which is a very emotional anthem and we liked that so much that we tried to learn it, but due to our bad knowledge of the language we had to write it down the lyrics ; the guys at the beginning said *welcome* instead of *Walk on*, so we explained the guys what was the meaning of the words until we learnt it.
This song made us famous all over Europe because we sang it when the Liverpool supporters died in Sheffield. It happened by saturday and we had the match against Real Madrid on sunday (that we won 5-1, a truly memorable moment)


We prepared a banner "SHEFFIELD: YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE" and we waited for the minute of silence, and we were prepared to sing the song and put the banner our, but the referee whistled the sudden start of the match. We put out the banner believing it was over but the referee suddenly stops the players and tributes 1 minute of silence in honour of the victims. I (narrator) was there, without even a micro but i standed up on the barrier and we started with this song *You'll never walk alone* without micro. I have the video at home and all the players are there standing up and you see the whole stadium standing up, and clapping.
You can clearly see the referee staring at me because the song can be clearly be heard by the pitch and the whole Curva starts the song with great powerful voice. When i tell this i'm still proud and emotive; on english telly they shooted it for 6 months and we got bags of letters from England: "you're friends of us and you'll be forever"



Tales from Brigate Rossonere

http://www.nannibalestrini.it/furiosi/furiosi.htm