Richard Scudamore, the executive chairman of the Premier League, says football has a “huge debt of gratitude” to the Hillsborough families who campaigned resiliently for justice for the 96 Liverpool fans who died in the 1989 disaster.
“Thank goodness for the verdicts of last week,’’ said Scudamore of the inquest that confirmed the families’ belief that police negligence led to the unlawful killing of the 96. “It has taken far too long to get there, far too many mistakes had been made, far too many people scared into covering up their actions, but thank goodness [justice has been reached] and we all owe them [the Hillsborough families] a huge debt of gratitude for sticking with it.
“The Premier League is in our 25th year next year, and it is unthinkable that throughout that tenure these families have been fighting, fighting just to be heard. It must be awful enough to lose a relative, but to lose a relative and have that frustration and not be able to see some form of justice, and therefore some form of closure, really is unthinkable.
“I assembled the staff here on April 15 when the [27th] memorial service was going on at Anfield and we had the minute’s silence here in the office. Just before that I said to the staff: ‘For those of us who enjoy administering football in 2016 we mustn’t forget what’s gone before.’ The truth is when you go back to Hillsborough, it’s one of the defining moments in English football history and out of that negative has come one of the positives that has formed the modern game. Hillsborough was definitely the moment when everyone said ‘things must change.’ ”
Ground improvements and more intelligent policing have made grounds unrecognisable from the Eighties. “They are safe,” continued Scudamore. “That’s the legacy. That’s no real comfort for those poor relatives who have lost loved ones and have had 27 years of not being able to get on with their lives and that’s the biggest tragedy of all. We can mourn the people who lost their lives but ultimately other lives have been impacted. Thank goodness we got there in the end with the right answers.”