‘I’m in pieces again’: Paris final fiasco triggers Hillsborough survivor trauma

Kevin Cowley is a 50-year-old driving examiner, a former Metropolitan police officer and a survivor of the Hillsborough disaster. He was in pen three on 15 April 1989, where many of the 97 Liverpool fans were unlawfully killed at the FA Cup semi-final. On Saturday he attended the Champions League final between Jürgen Klopp’s team and Real Madrid at Stade de France. His experience of Uefa’s showpiece event reopened a 33-year-old trauma.

“I am in pieces again,” said Cowley. His voice, breaking with emotion, testifies to that. “It took me years to get over Hillsborough and I feel like I’ve just relived Hillsborough again. Saturday was horrendous. I want to vocalise this because I spent so many years bottling up Hillsborough and that did so much to me that I have to do something this time. I want to talk.”

Cowley purchased a £125 ticket for the final through Liverpool. At 6.15pm on Saturday, two-and-three-quarter hours before the scheduled kick-off, he made his way to the stadium with a friend. “There was already a massive buildup of Liverpool fans trying to get to the ground,” he says. “We thought they must have put something in place to check tickets and bags, as they did in Madrid [for the 2019 Champions League final].

“We arrived at an underpass where the police kettled everybody. It was getting tighter and tighter. I hate crowds, I can’t do them. I have a mechanism for Anfield where I won’t get in that position. I had to climb over a fence because it was getting so tight, along with people of all ages. Then we came to another underpass where the police had parked vans across the road. The sheer weight of people meant I was forced against the bonnet of a police van.”

Steve Rotheram is the Liverpool City Region Mayor. He