Marco with his family
Marco's bedroom in Switzerland was portrayed in the LFC match programme
I was born in Basel in 1964. I had a fantastic upbringing there. I followed Basel everywhere all over Switzerland, even Europe before Liverpool came into my life in 1978. I used to go to home and away games with Basel. Then the madness began. There was an Italian-based travel agent in Basel who'd done sports events; Formula One, FA Cup Finals, European Cup Finals. I remember walking past his travel agency once when I was 14 in 1978. I somehow managed to convince my mum and my dad to let me go with that travel agent and I ended up at Wembley. 100,000 people. Liverpool faced Club Brugge. It was magic like Camp Nou in Barcelona or Maracana in Rio. I grew up watching Basel in front of 30,000, sometimes 40,000 - 45,000 people. I remember walking into Wembley, I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ All you could see is heads. It was on a different level to what I was used to. I wasn't supporting Liverpool. I just wanted to go to Wembley.
Liverpool came to Basel that year in August and beat Basel 6-0 in a pre-season friendly. I was absolutely fuming. They just battered Basel. After that Basel-Liverpool pre-season friendly, I bought a white silk scarf that said: ‘Liverpool are magic, European champions, 1977-1978’. Then, this love affair started. My first game at Anfield was in November 1978 against Manchester City. Phil Neal scored late on from a penalty in the Kop End, 1-0.
The magical 1978/79 team also included the player Marco would come to admire above all others.
My favourite Liverpool player ever is Graeme Souness. Unbelievable player. He was mad. He was a beast, a monster, a general, a colossus, a captain, a leader, he was a footballer as well. His winning mentality spread through the whole team. People say he was dirty, he had a mean streak, he was hard. That's the way it was back then. It was just street fighting. Back then, to boss a midfield, you probably had to be like that, especially in the English game. You couldn't be a chicken, you couldn't be a shithouse and captain of a big football club. You have to stand up for the club. If things didn't go well, if you look at Souness; 80%, 90%, he will get you out of this shit. He had the brain, he had the charisma, he had the technique, he had the vision. He knew what was happening before it actually happened.
I was still in school and I never had much money. I came for the Charity Shield in ‘79, when Liverpool beat Arsenal 3-1 at Wembley. I was in the Kop when we won the League against Aston Villa in '80. My travelling mania started around 1980. When I left school, I had an apprenticeship in a Swiss factory. All my money went to follow Liverpool then. I used to love coming around Christmas, staying for about a week, 10 days, and then going every day, apart from Christmas Day. When Liverpool didn't play, I used to go to other games; Nottingham Forest against Coventry, Leicester against Bury, the old Division 2 and 3.
I used to get the Football Specials to away games from Lime Street. And people started recognising my face. ‘There's the fella again from Switzerland.’ They gave me a nickname as well, ‘Switzer’. I still struggled with the Scouse accent then. They used to laugh at me. I just laughed at them because I pretended I understood what they were saying. A place I used to stay all the time was the YMCA on Mount Pleasant. It was about £6.50 for a night. Very, very basic. A bed, communal shower. I didn't come to Liverpool to stay in a five-star hotel.
I had a Swiss passport from 1980 to 1990. I had 220 stamps in 10 years coming from Basel, Switzerland, into the UK to watch Liverpool, which is an average of 22 times a year. Back then, it wasn't jumping into Ryanair or EasyJet from Switzerland. It was 22 hours each way. I used to do that every other week, sometimes twice a week. It was absolute madness. I used to work Monday till Thursday night and then take the weekend off; Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I worked four or five days, took two or three days off. That was the routine throughout the season. I remember going to the boss and he said, ‘How many times do you need to go over there?’ People thought I was crazy. Well, I was crazy. Sometimes it was a bit of a struggle to get a ticket, especially for the away games. But I always managed to get a ticket. I have great stories and I’d do it all over again.
Marco is apparently not afraid of heights
Marco's view in the Olympic stadium in Rome
Two of the friends Marco made on the train to the 1984 European Cup final in Rome would be with him at the next one, in Brussels.
On the train from Basel to Rome, I befriended two Scousers. They never had a hotel in Rome. I had a hotel booked for three nights. I bunked them two in the hotel so they didn't have to sleep on a bench. The porter must have watched us on CCTV. There was a knock on my room’s door. He booted everyone out, including me. So the three of us, me and them two lads, slept on park benches by Termini train station. I remember the game itself, not much inside the ground. Glass panels separating Liverpool and Roma fans. There was a bit of riot police there, not much inside. And then outside the ground there was chaos. But I've always managed to stay away from trouble, not just Roma in ‘84. I don't want to get my head kicked in, I don't want to punch anyone, I just want to watch the match and celebrate. But the Romans didn't take it well.
The attacks on Liverpool supporters by Roma fans, both before and after the final, were strongly condemned by the Italian press. La Repubblica described a 'Manhunt against the English', while Il Corriere dello Sport denounced a night of 'vile, blind violence'. Despite the presence of approximately 5,000 police officers across Rome, Liverpool fans were ambushed by Roma ultras armed with bats, chains and knives. Bricks were thrown at coaches from moving cars, while masked men on Vespas attacked supporters on foot. Women, children and elderly fans were among the victims. As many as 90 Liverpool supporters reportedly required hospital treatment, many with knife wounds. One 47-year-old man was stabbed in the kidneys and needed four hours of emergency surgery to save his life.
By the time Liverpool faced Everton in the Charity Shield in August 1984, Marco was serving in the Swiss army.
In the summer of ‘84, aged 20, I was serving Swiss National service and the Charity Shield was coming up. Was I gonna miss that? Not a chance in Hell! I went to my superiors and made a bereavement story up: ‘Me auntie died and I need to attend the funeral.’ The army gobshites fell for it. I was based by Lausanne and I called my sister, ‘Get me a flight to London for Saturday morning, returning Sunday afternoon.’ She sent me a parcel with me flight tickets, passport and clothes. Like any good sister, Sandra Fasciglione did as she was told. After receiving the parcel from me sister, in full army uniform as that’s the way you travel when serving, carrying my army rucksack, machine gun and ammunition, I jumped a train from Lausanne to Basel. In the train toilets I changed from my army uniform into t-shirt, jeans and trainers, took the machine gun apart and stuffed everything including ammunition into my army rucksack. Arriving in Basel that rucksack went into a left luggage locker and I boarded the flight to London. Outside Wembley I got a ticket….. Bruce Grobbelaar scored an own goal and we got beat 1-0 in front of 100,000. I slept one night at the airport, then boarded the flight back to Basel on Sunday, got my army belongings and got on the train to Lausanne, changed into my army uniform and checked into army camp on Sunday evening. Some army mates knowing I supported Liverpool approached me saying, ‘Hey Marco, Liverpool got beat’ and I replied, ‘Yeah, read it in the papers!’ I could have gone to prison for it, there’s no doubt about that! I lied to superiors regarding bereavement, leaving ammunition and a machine gun in a train station’s left luggage locker and left the country while on national service duty. They never found out and they didn’t know that Marco is half Scouse and deffo mad!
The soldier who went AWOL to see Liverpool play
In December 1984 Marco made it to Tokyo to see Liverpool play Independiente in the World Club Championship.
I couldn't go to the game against Flamengo in Tokyo in 1981. I was 17 but my stepdad took my passport and I couldn't travel. But I went in ‘84. I remember going to my boss in the factory. ‘I want to go to Japan.’ You should have seen my boss' look. ‘Why are you going to Japan for?’ So the trip was from Basel and it was a perfect flight to Karachi to Beijing, change flight to Tokyo. It took 36 hours to get there. So I remember landing in Tokyo thinking, ‘What am I going to do?’ I can't speak Japanese. I only speak a little English. I managed to get a hotel somewhere in Tokyo city centre. Then after a day or two I thought, ‘I haven't got a match ticket.’ So I started asking people, ‘Where do Liverpool FC stay?’ I found out where Liverpool stayed. I remember walking into the hotel in the foyer. I see Phil Neal standing there. I was cheeky back then. I was only 20. I was full of confidence. I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hello Phil. I need a match ticket.’ He looked at me. He goes, ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Switzerland.’ He said something like, ‘You've come all the way here?’ I said, ‘From Basel.’ ‘Wait here’, he said. So he disappeared for ten minutes. He came back and gave me a ticket. I said, ‘How much?’ He said, ‘No, you paid enough.’ The next thing, he pointed to this hall. And I didn't notice them at first. There were Ian Rush, Bob Paisley, Jan Molby, Dalglish, Joe Fagan and Grobbelaar. I had pictures with them and got their autographs in a little book. After the trip, when I went back.., I had a German pen-friend.I can't even remember his name and his address. He said to me, ‘Can you send me the pictures?’ I never got them back. I sent most of the pictures. I thought that he's genuine enough, this pen-friend. That was a good trip. I was walking around Tokyo thinking, ‘what am I doing here?’ Great memories. I think it's a catalyst in my life as a supporter.
Prentending to read a Japanase mag
Of all the matches Marco would go back to, the one he picks is the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United at Goodison Park in April 1985
If I could go in a time machine and go back one game, most people would say Saint-Étienne or Rome but that was a year before I started. Most people would say Istanbul, even though that was the best week of my life, but I say the 1985 FA Cup semi-final against Man United. There was absolutely carnage before the game. There was fighting everywhere. The police couldn't cope with the volume of people. Battlefields everywhere. The atmosphere in The Gwladys Street Stand was just on a different level, the noise, the 120 minutes, the drama on the pitch, the hatred between Liverpool and Man United. It was horrible, proper hatred. You had Man United in Bullens Road and the Park End, Liverpool in the Main stand and the Gwladys Street Stand. There was hatred coming from all fours. But the game itself wasn't a good game, football standard-wise. But the drama, United go 1-0 up, then we equalised in the 88th minute. Extra time, United go 2-1 up, Paul Walsh equalised in the 120th minute. That game and the atmosphere represented me, mad in my head.
In Brussels with his sister and mother and friends
Looing forward to another European Cup final before the tragedy
A year after Rome, Liverpool were back in the European Cup final, this time against Juventus at Heysel.
I was cheeky. I'd written a letter before the final to the Swiss FA,’Can I have 10 tickets for the final at Heysel?’ Back then every European football country received a certain amount of tickets for the final. The Swiss FA sent me 10 tickets, and they were all for section Z, the neutral section. So I jumped on the train. If you look at Switzerland, you've got Italy underneath it, so all the Juventus supporters coming from Turin, they travelled through Basel, going to Belgium. When I got on the train in Basel, I think it was Monday night, and the game was on a Wednesday. There were hundreds of Juventus supporters there. I speak Italian as well as I've got an Italian background, and so we had a laugh. I made the remark that I've got nine spare tickets. I sold them face value to these nine Italians, and they treated me like a king. I swapped the tenth Z ticket for a section XY ticket so I could go into the Liverpool end. On the way to Brussels, the Italians bought me beers. When we got to Brussels on Tuesday, they arranged to meet at this restaurant, they bought food, and then on the Wednesday we met up again, before the game, one o'clock in the afternoon, nice sunny blue sky day, we had a laugh, swapped scarves, we took pictures, Then we parted, because they went into Z, and I went into Y with me mates, and I never, ever, ever, found out what happened to the Italians.
Marco was in section Y, next to the area where the crush occurred and 39 people lost their lives.
Heysel is a big massive black day in Liverpool's history. Apart from Hillsborough, it's got to be the saddest day in our history. The ground was not up for it. The police presence wasn't up for it. The neutral sections, they shouldn't have been put next to us. I was in section Y next to Z and I just watched this getting thrown, that getting thrown. Then the fence came down and we charged into Z. When I say “We charged” I mean collectively “We” as a group of Liverpool supporters. I didn’t charge or throw anything. I just watched it all unfold to my right. They retreated and we charged again. They retreated more and we charged. I don't think there was a need for us to charge another two, three times because the battle for Z section was won. As a group of supporters, I blame us for that. We wanted to occupy their space and move them away. It was done. They retreated, they were cornered, they panicked. You talk about three, four, five thousand people retreating towards the wall behind them, people getting crushed to death already before the wall goes. Sometimes in life you have to hold your hands up. We’ve done wrong.
I went to a game with a French fella, an Austrian fella and the two Scousers I met in Rome one year earlier. My mum and my sister were in the Juventus end. In all the mayhem in my head, I thought my mum and sister were in Z. Only after the game it sunk in, they're not even in Z, they're alright. We got banned for six years, and I think rightly so. The whole thing was unintentional. Yes, the intention of fighting was there, but no one wanted to kill anyone, no one went into the ground and thought, well, I'm going to kill that Italian there. It ended up with 39 normal people like you and me, dead. I just wanted to go to support my team, if you get beat, you get beat, you walk away from the ground and say, 'Okay, we got beat.' Some Liverpool supporters have tried to push it under the carpet and you think, well, hang on a minute, mate, we got Hillsborough, and we remember, and they remember just as well. I worked at a factory that had a big Italian population, Spanish as well, because Switzerland was a hub for jobs and in the 1950s, 60s, all the Spanish came to Switzerland, loads of Italians came, loads of people from the old Yugoslavia, before it split up. I had a bit of a hard time in the factory, like, especially with the Italians after Heysel.
The Juventus supporters he had given tickets to, stayed with him. Years later, he began posting his pictures of them on Juventus pages, hoping someone would recognise the men he had met on the train.
There's a big monkey on my back, big cloud on my back. Young lads, my age back then, maybe 25. When the internet came around, in the late 90s, I kept on posting pictures on Juventus pages, anyone remembers me, big curly hair, anyone remembers him, anyone remembers that, and I used to do that every anniversary, on May 29th, for the last 5, 6, 7, whatever years, 10 years, I never got anything back, not even, ‘Oh my God, this is Giuseppe, he remembers you.' Maybe they died. Hopefully none died. Sometimes it's bit hard to think about that stuff.
Marco with Peggy at the LFC ticket office
In August 1986, Marco walked into Anfield’s ticket office with a simple idea: to buy a Kop season ticket. He hadn’t expected his Swiss address to earn him a place in the club’s history.
I just had this lightbulb moment. Why don't I get a season ticket? I went to the Anfield ticket office after the Charity Shield when we drew 1-1 against Everton in 1986. I said to Peggy at the ticket office, who I didn’t know then, in broken English something like; ‘Kop season ticket.’ Peggy gave me the form. And I put: ‘Marco Catena, Basel, Switzerland’. She looked at it and asked, ‘Where do you live in the UK?’ I said, ‘No, I don't live there.’ And she said, ‘Oh, hang on a minute.’ She disappeared for 10, 15 minutes, and came back. She said that she had phoned the Echo. Then this reporter turned up. It turned out that I was the first ever season ticket holder living abroad. I was surprised. I'm quite proud of that as well. I know that's not a big piece of Liverpool history, but it's still a little tiny piece of history. The cost was £47.50 if I remember right.
The trips from Basel were still taking 22 hours each way. In 1989, Marco moved to Liverpool to live the dream but he went from heaven to hell in just thirteen days.
I wanted to watch Liverpool every game, but travelling 22 hours there, 22 hours back was difficult. I met a woman as well, after the 1986 FA Cup final against Everton, and we started a relationship. When I used to come to Liverpool after the final in '86, I used to stay with her, and she turned out to be the future mother of the two kids I've got. I moved to Liverpool in 1989. My mum and my sister in Switzerland didn't want me to move. I had a good job back in Switzerland. I'd done my apprenticeship and I worked in that factory. I was in line for promotion so people thought, ‘Are you crazy?’ ‘You haven't got a job in England, why are you moving to Liverpool?’ The magnet of the old terraced Kop, for me, was too big.
I moved to Liverpool on 2nd of April 1989. It was a dream come true, packing my stuff and living in the city. I fell in love with the city in the early 80s. I fell in love with the people, and I fell in love with Liverpool Football Club, and I fell in love with the Kop. I loved the madness. I used to stand in the middle, between the two centre pillars. If you never experienced the standing Kop, it's hard to explain what it was. You've got people on your back. You had about 25-26,000 people. Ruthless. And the heat! It was quite a small structure and you couldn’t move. I loved the madness, the banter, the songs, the noise. Moving to Liverpool was a massive dream come true, but 13 days after I moved here, Hillsborough happened. I was on a high, and 13 days later, I was rock bottom. I remember after Hillsborough, I wanted to move back. But I had to get my head together, because my son Mark was born, and he was about one, one and a half, and I had to be a dad as well. I couldn't just go, see you later, bye, and 37 years later, I'm still here.
Content warning: The following passage contains a description of the Hillsborough disaster, a photograph taken during the tragedy and screenshots of online abuse relating to Hillsborough. Readers may find this material distressing.
During the Hillsborough disaster on 15th of April, 1989, Pens 3 and 4 on the Leppings Lane terrace became the tragic epicenter of the crush. While testimony from independent structural engineer John Cutlack revealed these two central enclosures had a combined safe capacity of just 1,458 people, an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 fans were packed into them after being funneled through the central tunnel. This catastrophic overcrowding occurred after police commander David Duckenfield ordered exit Gate C to be opened, causing more than 2,000 supporters to enter the stadium and funnel directly down a central tunnel into the already-congested Pens 3 and 4.
Marco was in Pen 3 on the Leppings Lane terrace. He described what he saw in The Socialist Worker on 26 April 2016.
“We walked in there at about 2.20. At first, I didn’t notice anything different. I didn’t see people dying in front of me. You can’t see because you couldn’t move. Only when people started being dragged out of the back, I saw bodies lying around. Afterwards the radio said there were nine dead. Then 20. Then 30. We were in shock. Pens 3 and 4 were packed at quarter past two if not earlier. The police control room had the perfect view of them. They knew. They said supporters would find their own level. But when I walked down that tunnel, I didn’t know it was jam packed. All the police had to do was block the entrance to the tunnel like they did in 1988. A solicitor told me that if I’d been standing three or four feet to the right, I could have been dead. It was based on what time you walked in and where you were standing. It could have been anybody.”
Marco, whose head is circled in this photograph, in Pen 3 at Hillsborough.
When Marco returned to Switzerland that summer, his mother’s first question took him back to Heysel.
I remember going back to Switzerland that summer in ‘89, and one of the first things my mum said to me, ‘What have you done again?’ And that's a remark about Heysel, ‘What have you done now?’ I tried to explain, ‘Mum, we never done anything wrong in 89.' Yeah, Heysel, I put my hands up, but in '89 it wasn't our fault though. But because South Yorkshire Police and Maggie Thatcher worked it well, they did a great job for spreading this lie, because at the end of the day, people from Leicester, London, whatever part of the UK, whatever part of Europe, who did they believe? They believed the authorities, because Heysel had just happened four years earlier. I'm not blaming every copper. I'm blaming their superiors. Because there were some good policemen there, there were some good policewomen there, who tried to pull people out, tried to save them, but David Duckenfield sat there the day after, thinking, 'I'm gonna sort this out, how am I gonna turn the tables, and blame them?' They spread the rumours about 10,000 turning up ticketless, everyone was drunk, which was a lie, we forced the gate open, which was a lie, so they'd done it well as well as the Sun paper that was probably the biggest paper in the UK. They don't care about anyone, really, any decency or whatever.
In 2013, Marco gave a statement about Hillsborough. Three years later, he was in Warrington when the inquest jury found that the victims had been unlawfully killed.
The first time I spoke about Hillsborough was 2013, 24 years later. They needed statements for what happened on the day of Hillsborough for the 2014 inquest. I went to a solicitor in Liverpool… 'I'll do this, I'm hard,' and all that. I remember going to the solicitor. I was there in a room with two women interviewing me for two hours. It was one of the most horrendous days of my life. I can't remember how many times I broke down. They gave me a box of tissues. I couldn't speak, then I spoke for five minutes and then started crying again. Looking back, it was good to talk. My statements and evidence were never used. There were loads. They couldn't pick all the statements for the inquest. I just tried to help, that's it. And then in 2016 on the verdict day, we got the non-guilty. South Yorkshire Police finally admitted, 'We lied for 27 years.' We knew that anyway, but it took 27 years to actually prove it. The inquest lasted for two years, 2014 to 2016. The longest inquest in British legal history. They altered 300 statements, the South Yorkshire Police went to policewomen’s and to policemen's houses and said, if you don't change your statement, you will never ever work for the police again. I understand the people, because at the end of the day, working for the police, that was their life, that was their job, they had to pay rent, they had to feed the kids, and they had to change their statements due to immense pressure from their superiors. A week after Hillsborough, the Sun paper, with "The Truth" headline and all that just fed the masses with this lie.
I remember going on verdict day, the 26th of April, 2016 in Warrington. The main court was absolutely rammed, you couldn't even get in there. So I went to the side, they had a video link to the main court, and then the verdict came down. Are we guilty? Did we cause it? No, no, no, no, no. South Yorkshire Police, yeah. I remember just hugging strangers in this room, crying. I remember phoning my mum and my sister up in Switzerland, just shouting on the phone, ‘We did it, we did it, we did it, we proved it,' and just crying. Then we drove back to Liverpool after the verdict, and I ended up in The Ship & Mitre pub. Everyone was there on verdict day, loads of people. I remember just getting drunk. There was the Bob Marley song, "Three Little Birds", that came on, ‘Don’t worry about a thing.' I was absolutely rotten. I remember coming out of the pub, falling over on the street, and I just laughed. Because it was this big weight off our shoulders, 27 years, and boom, you know what mate, we got the non-guilty verdict, but justice has never been done, no one ended up charged with anything, no one ended up in prison. David Duckenfield is still living his life, enjoying playing golf. He retired. He knew he had to retire. He finally admitted; the 96 died because I opened gates, exit gate C, yes, and he still got away with it.
The system, the police, they all looked after each other again, and no one got jailed. We got the verdict in 2016, but is that justice? No, it's not. 14 of us got done for Heysel, 14 Liverpool supporters got done for manslaughter, they ended up in the Nick for 2, 3, 4, 6 months, whatever, and some Belgium officials got prison sentences as well, so there's a bit of justice there? Some got prison, but you know, killing 97, they're still living their lives.
When Marco talks about accountability, he also goes back to what he saw at Heysel.
I've had arguments with some Liverpool supporters, ‘Well, they threw the first stick’, that doesn't matter. David Duckenfield stood in court and said the direct consequence of the 96 dying in 1989 was him opening exit gate C at 2.51 and not thinking where they're going, they all went, mostly went down the tunnel. The direct consequence of the 39 people dying is us charging needlessly, no need at all, another two, three times. You can’t have it both ways. We are guilty of it, not all of it as I'm not saying we ever made a mistake picking that ground, organisation and all that, but the old ground didn't kill the 39. The non-existent police is a factor but didn't kill the 39. The 39 got killed because we couldn't stop.
The verdict was one milestone. Learning to live with what Marco had witnessed and experienced took longer.
I struggled for the best part of 30 years. The 10-15 years after it was horrendous, every anniversary that came up on the 15th of April, even when the kids were little, I used to push everyone away, I used to push the kids' mum away and I used to lock myself up in the bedroom and just look, back then there was no internet. I just looked at paper cutouts, people getting squashed. Why did they get killed? Why did I walk out of that alive? Why did he die? I should be dead, and there was, there was so much going on in my head. I had suicidal thoughts. I'd done all kinds of counselling which didn't help. Then I joined this group about four years ago, the HSA, Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance, and they designed this therapy. They sorted my head out, but it will never go away.
BBC reporting on Marco Catena's court battle with Paul O'Neill. Copyright - BBC
Marco has pursued six cases involving Hillsborough abuse on social media and is now working on a seventh.
I'm not angry anymore, but sometimes when someone says something horrible on social media, I deal with the odd one, I take them to court. I got one 68 days in court last year. He was in jail for 68 days because he didn't surrender to the police. He was actually going into details about the blue fence, body bags… What encourages people to say stuff like this? He was a 50 year old businessman, he wasn't just a young lad. It took two and a half, three years to get him down but I took him down. They usually get a fine, criminal record for malicious communications.
Marco has been fighting those who have posted Hillsborough abuse
Marco made his home in Liverpool, but when Basel came to Anfield, he took his place in the away end.
When Liverpool played Basel in the Champions League in 2002 and 2014, I supported Basel. I remember being at Anfield at the 1-1 game. I was at the away end. I was slagging Gerrard and Michael Owen off. Basel knocked Liverpool out 3-3 in Switzerland. And the same again in 2014, Basel knocked Liverpool out. I was in the away end at Anfield. I know it sounds mad. But at the end of the day, I'm from Basel and that will always be my first love. There was no decision to make. Basel is my hometown and I still go back 3-4 times a year to see my mum and my sister. Everyone lives there apart from my kids here now.
I gave up my season ticket in 2011. From 2011 till about 2020, I went to Liverpool games 10-20 times a season, but in the last five or six years, it has just swizzled down. I still go to two, three, four games a season, something like that. Circumstances have changed. Life has changed. Costs have changed. You have to keep a balance between going to the match. You go to Tottenham away, Chelsea away or whatever away, you're talking about £300- £400. Transport, having something to eat, having a drink, a match ticket. I've still got loads of mates that go everywhere. I wouldn't say I'm jealous of them, but I do miss going everywhere. I had dogs, I had a partner, so I had to find a balance between keeping them satisfied and satisfying my needs as well.
Marco with members of Juventus' ultra group whose website is dedicated to remembering Heysel
In May 2026, 41 years after the final, Marco returned to Brussels with a Liverpool scarf, flowers and a letter he had written.
I made a decision this May to go back there. I'd written a letter of sorrow, forgiveness, reasons why I came back, and that helped. I had this idea. I need to bring a scarf, bring flowers, the letter. I remember going on the metro in Brussels towards Heysel. I got off at Heysel metro station, and I thought, from the outside Heysel still looked exactly the same as in 1985. It's an all-seated ground now, renamed King Baudouin Stadium and, obviously, they painted it all. Straight away I noticed a group of Juventus supporters, all in black. 25-30 Juventus Drughi ultras standing there, all in t-shirts, sunglasses on, all in black, and my backside started to twitch for a minute. I came here in peace. I was just in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, no Liverpool colours, no cap, nothing. I made a beeline for them. I said, ‘What time does the ground open?'' and they recognised my accent. I saw two, three older people my age, all in black, and I hugged one of them and I started getting emotional. I explained to them in my broken Italian, that I came here in peace, and I came here to apologise after 41 years. The three old ones accepted me straight away. When I was hugging the older fella, one of the young ones shouted, ‘Ask him who he supports!’ and I went, ‘Liverpool’, and I got horrible looks. Even though I didn't hear it, I know that the two, three older ones said to the young ones, ‘Leave him alone.'
I said my goodbyes, and I walked around the ground. I met them again in a beergarden and I explained to them in a proper way, the reason I'm coming here. I'm ashamed of what happened in ‘85. I came here in peace and they accepted me. I had a drink with them, only a couple of drinks, mostly coffees and espressos or whatever, and they did accept me. I even took pictures with them and it was a nice moment. If I'd been a Juventus supporter, and I was there in '85, I would never, ever forgive Liverpool. If you've got a family member dying, an uncle, a son, a mother, a wife, how can you forgive? You can't, but they accepted me. I didn't go there to cause trouble. I got there because I needed to do that for myself. Section Z, where the wall was.
Marco's letter
They still have that Red Animals banner there. I think it's a copy one and not the original from 85. They put it against the fence and stood in front of the banner and started singing, ‘We hate Liverpool’, and all that. I got up with a bunch of flowers, and placed them in front of the banner, and they clapped. It was an unreal moment. Some people said to me, ‘Are you crazy, you could have been battered, ended up in the hospital with a knife in your stomach.’ I know that, but I needed to go. I didn't expect them to be there, maybe one or two, but not a whole group.
Juventus’ Drughi ultras describe how they welcomed Marco in 2026 (translated from Italian)
"The man who advances with flowers and a Reds scarf, nevertheless, is applauded and welcomed by the Italian and Belgian fans present. Photos are taken, a few selfies to immortalize something that seems an anomaly, but it cannot and must not be, because the Memory of Heysel cannot be surrounded by geographical barriers, nor belong to anyone, perhaps to castes or an elite with more or less subtle and private interests."
Marco in Istanbul with "The Pope"
European Cup win in Madrid in 2019
Marco has never forgotten where he came from, nor has he shied away from confronting the painful chapters of his past, particularly Heysel and Hillsborough. His willingness to acknowledge difficult truths, speak openly about his experiences and continue standing up for fellow survivors says much about the man. Basel may always be his first love, but Liverpool has become his home.
Interview by Arnie ([email protected]) - Copyright LFChistory.net