5. Less Hooliganism
One of the biggest problems in the tournaments later years was the growing concern over hooliganism in the game. A match between two British teams is always going to be a feisty affair, but in the eighties you had the added issue of the crowd problems in this country being at there absolute worst. Not only was this a time of regular violence both in and outside the ground it was also when racist chanting was a regular feature of the match day experience. Considering that the amount of black players in the game was growing this was a real problem and was a big reason for the home internationals end. In 1985 about a year after the tournament ended the Heysel disaster which claimed the lives of 39 Juventus fans occurred, this was followed by the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 which resulted in the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters. Though we now know that the latter was not because of any wrongdoing from either group of fans, the combination of both events led to an attempt to clean up the game in this country. The attempt was a success and whilst it will never be perfect I can honestly say that I haven't experienced any horrific crowd trouble in my lifetime, its got to the point that any form of crowd trouble in this day and age will be a massive story in the media for weeks because it simply does not happen much anymore. Crowd control in this country has come a long way and that should be celebrated; Britain is a multicultural and diverse country these days, a football stadium is and extremley safe place to be and any form of racism will not be tolerated. The reputation of football has come a long way from the dark times of the gang warfare and racist abuse that it was once crippled by and this should be celebrated. In recent years there have been several occasions when one of our national teams or club sides have received racial abuse from foreign opposition, though most express outrage others make the case that we should not judge theses countries as we were once where they are. I disagree with this completely, we are not in that position anymore because we are a modern and forward thinking country, who believe in treating each other with respect, and we should not be afraid to judge those who are not willing to act like decent human beings. What better way to celebrate how far we have come than bringing back a tournament that the once bigoted atmosphere of the game helped destroy.