I was used to Cruyff, who had been a great player. We thought the same way. Sacchi was more theoretical. We had to watch so many videos and he was always talking during training. It was too much. I told him: ‘Mister, you have already told me this 12 times. If I don’t understand it now, I never will.’
(Source: Guardian, 31 October 2020)
| May 1963: AC Milan's Cesare Maldini tackles Benfica's Eusebio |
“The mass is a river of screams and panic. Unstoppable and unknowing it crushes anyone who stumbles and falls. The avalanche of people goes from fear to hysteria when at the foot of the stairs, that descent into death, it encounters closed doors. Metal objects that only open to the inside. There is no turning back, away from that fatal escape route. No way back up to the stands, where, despite the asphyxiating gas, freedom awaits, instead of this prison of bodies that crush, suffocate, and kill each other. The pressure of those joining the human waterfall makes escaping impossible. The air gets exhausted. Lungs shrink. Ribs break.”
Thus, loosely translated, wrote the journalist Mauricio Gil in the Peruvian paper El Comercio. What is being described above is not the Hillsborough disaster or the Heysel drama, but by far the greatest football disaster in history. A disaster that has been almost completely forgotten outside of Peru.