Today, April 14, 2014, marks the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. The opportunity to relive what is known as the darkest day in English football will come at 8:00 p.m. ET when ESPN airs the latest installment of its 30 for 30 specials. Hillsborough, directed by Daniel Gordon, is the most comprehensive film account of the day's tragic events and is available to watch online here free.
At the start, it was simply an afternoon of FA Cup football between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool FC. Six minutes later, it was the scene of an overcrowded nightmare—one that claimed 96 lives.
More than half of those lives were under the age of 24.
According to Gordon and some of the victim's families, it took tragedy to reform English football. Much of the Premier League's success today is attributed to the lives taken that fateful afternoon (h/t to Grant Wahl on SI.com). "Without Hillsborough we wouldn't have the [all-seater] stadiums we have now. We wouldn't have had the money pour in, both from a stadium point of view and a media point of view," Gordon said. "We wouldn't have been built year-on-year-on-year to basically make the spectacle that we watched yesterday [in Liverpool]," he added.
"It's not in the film, but one of the families said during interviews, 'When you're sitting in your Premier League ground enjoying the facilities and your nice seat and you're safe, think back and be grateful. Because it wouldn't have happened without [Hillsborough].'"
For those familiar with the tragic events, Gordon's documentary will only strengthen their recollections. Those unfamiliar, however, will be provided with the most complete soccer documentary since Jeff and Michael Zimbalist's the Two Escobars.
"What I wanted was to make the definitive account of Hillsborough, the story of the day, the immediate aftermath and the 25 years since. If you really know Hillsborough inside and out, the big thing that's new here is it's all in one film."
"For most people coming to it, it's nearly all new."
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