April 5 – Tragedy in Turkey | On This Football Day

April 5 – Tragedy in Turkey

AS John Gregory, the manager of Aston Villa at the time, said: “You don’t go to a football match and expect not to come home.”

Gregory was speaking on the eve of Villa’s match with Leeds United – the first game the Elland Road club played after their European match in Turkey where tragically, on this day in 2000, two Leeds fans died.

CHRISTOPHER Loftus and Kevin Speight had travelled to watch Leeds play Galatasaray in the first leg of their Uefa Cup semi final tie but trouble broke out between the two sets of fans the night before the match.

Turkish television station A-TV showed English fans lying in pools of blood in Taksim Square, in the centre of Istanbul’s entertainment district as the trouble flared.

Loftus and Speight were stabbed in the clashes and died from their injuries.

Peter Ridsdale, then Leeds chairman told the BBC after visiting Taksim hospital where Loftus was taken: “It is a tragedy. One minute I was talking to Galatasaray directors to promote the friendship between the two clubs and the next minute I receive a telephone call telling me there had been some problems in town and a fan had been killed.

“Tonight is going down as one of those black nights in history.”

The match did go ahead the following night and was preceeded by an unofficial minute’s silence that was only observed by the Leeds players and fans. To the disgust of many fans only the players from the Yorkshire side wore black armbands in the match that Galatasaray won 2-0.

“Leeds United were the only team that wore black armbands. That’s the only thing I could control,” said Ridsdale.

“I don’t want to talk about why the Galatasaray players didn’t wear them or why there was no minute’s silence.”

The tragedy did not do anything to diminish the famously intimidating atmosphere in the Ali Sami Yen Stadium and the home fans reportedly booed a stadium announcement about the killings. The many ‘Welcome to Hell’ banners were removed by police.

The return leg also went ahead on April 20 although Galatasaray fans were banned from the fixture after Leeds said they would not be able to guarantee their safety. The absence of away fans did not prevent trouble at the game though as Leeds supporters targeted the Turkish club’s team coaches and clashed with police outside the ground. The match finished at 2-2 on the night to give the Turks a 4-2 win on aggregate, although the result by now seemed largely irrelevant to most given the events in Istanbul.

The one person to come out of the whole episode with any credit was Peter Ridsdale. The former Leeds chairman was widely praised for the diplomatic way he handled the situation in very difficult circumstances, and what remains one of football’s most shameful and tragic episodes.