Chris Parsonage will probably always be a soccer fan. But he may think twice about ever going to another match. For the rest of his life, he will remember April 15, 1989---when an afternoon soccer game turned into a deadly stampede.
　　Chris, a 29-year-old math teacher, was looking forward to Saturday’s soccer match at Hillsborough Stadium in heffield, England. He lived just outside the city of Liverpool, and he had been excited about the game all week. He was planning to watch Liverpool’s team play in the semifinal match for the national cup. Liverpool fans love their soccer team, so Chris knew the stadium would be crowded.
　　Soccer is tremendously popular all over Europe, and English fans are famous for their team loyalty. But that loyalty has sometimes gotten out of hand. Mobs of supporters have damaged property and started deadly brawls with rival fans. In fact, English soccer fans have been so violent that for several years their teams were barred from European competition.
But Chris Parsonage didn’t expect any trouble at Saturday’s playoff game. He and two friends arrived at the stadium and began to make their way through the crowded turnstiles. His friends had tickets for seats in the stands, but Chris was headed for the terrace behind the Liverpool goal. It was cheaper than his friends’ seats because it had standing room only.
　　Local police and England’s soccer association knew that soccer matches had a reputation for violence. And Liverpool fans were especially prone to brawls. So officials had erected security fences at either end of the field, between each terrace and goal. They hoped the steel mesh would keep Liverpool fans from pouring onto the field to attack the fans of the rival team.
　　Outside the turnstiles, the crowd began to thicken as Liverpool fans gathered at their gate. Most people in the crowd did not have tickets. They came to the match planning to buy them at the door. But for some reason, fans of Liverpool’s opponent, Nottingham Forest, had been allotted more tickets. So while the rival fans streamed in at their gate, many Liverpool fans were forced to wait outside.
　　Angry and noisy, the fans milled around the gate. The crowd had swollen to 3,000 people by now. And police began to rear a riot. To keep the pressure from building up outside the arena, an officer opened a gate to the stadium.
　　Meanwhile, Chris Parsonage had managed to get through the turnstiles .He walked along the tunnel that led from the gate to the terrace. Nearby he heard someone mention that the police had opened the gates behind him, but he wasn’t worried. He said later, “Everyone was pushing forward to get in and see the kickoff, but I had been in crowds like this before.”Confident that he would find a place to stand, Chris just wasn’t prepared for the chaos that happened next.
　　He made his way to the terrace and tried go move to a place where he could see the game. But then he realized that he was trapped. The crowd was so tight that he could not move to either side, and the situation was getting worse. He felt the pressure building up behind him like the swell of a giant wave. Thousands of fans had now surged through the tunnel.
　　Chris and the people around him were lifted off their feet from the extreme pressure. One of Chris’s legs was pulled forward while the other was trapped against a barrier. He began to scream. “I honestly thought my leg would snap,” he remembered, “and I was panicking.”
　　All around him people were screaming and fainting. He watched in horror as a man in front of him turned blue. But there was nothing Chris could do to help His arms and legs were pinned by the crowd around him.
　　The fans tried yelling for the police to stop the game. But they couldn’t scream for long because they had to save their breath Chris said he struggled to keep his mouth up high so that he could keep breathing
　　At the front of the terrace, hundreds of fans were pressed against the steel-mesh security fence, as the crowd continued to squeeze forward. Some people fell and were trampled, while others were crushed to death against the 10-foot-high immovable fence. Bill Eastwood, a safety expert who was present at the disaster, said, “There must have been a half ton of pressure across each person’s midriff.”
　　Chris Parsonage was lucky. Somehow the surge of the crowd pushed him into an empty seat He sat there for am hour and a half, unable to walk on his injured leg He recalled, “I started shaking and crying because I knew very well I could have been dead. I could see all those people being carried away like dolls in a toy shop, with arms hanging all over the　place.”
　　Ninety-four fans were killed in the stampede. And nearly 200 more were injured Many of the dead were children and teenagers. Who had been crushed and suffocated by a crowd of taller adults.
　　Chris Parsonage, who is more than six feet tall, believes that his height saved his life
　　Amazingly, many people at the soccer match had no idea that fellow fans were being pressed to death. Because the people on the terrace couldn’t breathe, they also couldn’t scream so the danger wasn’t realized until it was too late. Soccer officials, unaware of the tragedy, did not call off the match immediately. The players on the field continued the game for six minutes while their fans were being killed in front of them.
　　The tragedy at Sheffield is just one example of the ongoing problem with English soccer crowds. And some researchers believe that the stadiums themselves are the cause of many incidents. A number of popular stadiums are small and outdated. Others are built in cramped city neighborhoods, where there is no room to organize a crowd. Some people believe that if England wants to avoid crowd disasters in the future, the country must invest in larger, more modern stadiums. They will make police security easier and safer. And they will also attract families who are now afraid to attend soccer matches.
　　But a new stadium won’t make Chris Parsonage forget Sheffield, “I still wake up crying in the middle of the night and see that guy’s face in front of me. At the stadium I think I was crying because I was alive. Now I don’t know. I think I am crying for the dead.”

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