October 20, 1982, 40 years ago: A UEFA Cup match was scheduled for the Grand Sports Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium, now named the Luzhniki Stadium. Spartak Moscow, the most popular sports team in the Soviet Union, hosted Dutch club HFC Haarlem. (In 2010, the UEFA Cup was rebranded as the UEFA Europa League.)
Unlike some other soccer disasters, including the Hillsborough Disaster in Sheffield, England in 1989, the problem this time wasn't errors or overreactions by the police, despite the reputation of law enforcement under Communism. Nor was it, as was also the case at Hillsborough, due to too many tickets being sold. Even by Russian standards, this was a cold day for October: 14 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. As a result, a stadium that could then hold as many as 102,000 people sold only 16,643 tickets.
Lenin Stadium, as it appeared at the time
Contrast that with the 1967 NFL Championship Game, known as "the Ice Bowl": It was 13 below at kickoff, but Lambeau Field in Green Bay was still filled to its capacity at the time, 50,861. An NFL Films voiceover covering it for the 1986 video The NFL's Greatest Games said, "It is called 'Russian Winter,' the kind of cold that made Napoleon and Hitler flee in terror from the doorstop of Moscow. But in Green Bay, it is known as 'Packer Weather.'" Are Wisconsans tougher than Russians?
It is believed that only 100 fans had come from the Netherlands to support Haarlem, despite their having a young Ruud Gullit in their ranks. They won the Dutch league, the Eredivisie, in 1946 and had won promotion back into it in 1981 and qualified for the UEFA Cup in 1982. But they were relegated in 1990, and went bankrupt in 2010, and have had to start all over; the new club, named Haarlem Kennemerland, now plays in the Netherlands' 9th division.
Edgar Gess, a Tajik midfielder, scored in the 16th minute. The score remained 1-0 to Spartak nearly the rest of the way, and, not anticipating the poorly-supported visitors to get a late equalizer, hundreds of fans in the East Stand left their seats to leave the stadium and get to the Metro (Moscow's subway).
But in stoppage time, Georgian defender Sergei Shvetsov scored to make it 2-0. The fans leaving heard the remaining fans cheer, and, in what was long believed to be the same setup as the Ibrox Disaster in Glasgow, Scotland in 1971, many of them turned around to head back and see what happened. This led to fans bumping into each other on the stairwell and falling like dominoes.
There is an alternate theory that the reaction to Shvetsov's goal had nothing to do with it: Rather, it was a young woman losing a shoe, going back to pick it up, getting trampled, and a few fans stopping to help her, thus, in trying to make a bad situation better, instead making it far worse: Good Samaritanism gone horribly wrong.
Initially, the Soviet government announced that the number of fatalities was a mere 3. Some had speculated that it was as high as 340. It wasn't until the fall of the Soviet Union, and the declassification of many documents, that the true number of deaths was revealed: 66 -- oddly, the exact same number as the similar Ibrox Disaster. It remains the greatest sporting disaster ever to happen on the European continent.
Four stadium officials, including the stadium's director and its top police officer, were criminally charged. Two of them were never tried, due to illness. The other two were imprisoned for 3 years.
On November 3, the 2nd leg of the UEFA Cup tie was played in Haarlem. Despite Haarlem taking a 1-0 lead, Spartak won the game 3-1, including another goal by Shvetsov, won the tie 5-1, and advanced. On October 20, 2007, the 25th Anniversary, the players gathered at Luzhniki Stadium again, playing a memorial match for charity.
Built in 1956, the Luzhniki Stadium was the main stadium for the 1980 Olympics. Lenin's name was removed in 1992, following the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1996, the stadium was made all-seater, cutting capacity to 81,000, and a roof was added. In 2013, the stadium was demolished, with a new stadium built on the site, opening in 2017, for the 2018 World Cup, whose Final it hosted, with France beating Croatia.
The Luzhniki Stadium today. The building at the left is the Palace of Sport,
which hosted the Soviet side of the 1972 hockey "Summit Series."
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Also on this day, Game 7 of the World Series was played at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The Cardinals, including birthday boy Keith Hernandez, rallied for 3 runs in the 6th innings, to defeat the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-3. As far as I know, Hernandez is the only player ever to appear in a World Series-winning game on his birthday.
The Cardinals won their 9th World Series, a total surpassed only by the Yankees. Since then, if you combine their Philadelphia and Oakland titles, it has been matched by the Athletics, although the Cards have now made it 11.
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