In 1989 football’s future was uncertain. Roger Titford looks at how Hillsbrough began a process which created a safer but less visceral experience for fans

Just as they had been in 1969, the 1989 FA Cup semi-finals were scheduled for simultaneous 3pm kick-offs at Villa Park and Hillsborough. Twenty years on in 2009 they will be both be at Wembley on different days, live on TV and under the banner of “E.on, bringing families and football together”. If you can remember 1969 and 1989 you will read a hidden sub-text in that banner; something like “keeping young blokes and football apart”.

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Two decades on from the Hillsborough disaster John Williams looks back to April 15, 1989 and how the day’s events came to shape the very identity of Liverpool FC

Twenty years. Is it really that long ago? Where exactly did those two decades go? Squandered, in the main, I hear Reds fans say, by Messrs Souness, Evans and Houllier, our chaotic managers, and by various erratic (and worse) board members and owners. The current manager – one European Cup already won, but by glorious default – is trying hard to show he is more than a free-spending complainer and fiddler: a match at last for the fearsome Ferguson. Maybe he really is.

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Matt Nation’s enjoyment of sixth-tier football in Germany has taken a hit. A long bike ride to the game was just the start of an afternoon of play-acting, clumsy football and dodgy sausages

Just as titles are proverbially won or lost on wet weekday evenings against the league’s dunces, cycling to a football match into a headwind without a handkerchief will make you reconsider whether you attend sixth-tier football because you like it or because you’ve not got the resources to do anything else. After 15 miles on a blustery trunk road, not even the most carefully placed boys’ brigade blow will prevent your cuffs from looking like they’ve been overrun by a battalion of molluscs. Getting to this game has made you look and feel disgusting. Your willingness to turn a blind eye is thus slightly lower than it might otherwise be.

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For Flamengo goalkeeper Bruno scoring goals has become as important as saving them and he’s not alone, says Robert Shaw

By common consent, the Vasco da Gama v Flamengo derby on March 22 was a relatively clean game marred by overzealous card-waving from referee Luiz Antonio Silva dos Santos. However, observers also pointed out that the official somehow missed a wild halfway-line follow-through by Flamengo goalkeeper Bruno that threatened to decapitate Vasco’s Edu Pina.

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Martín Palermo recently became Boca Juniors’ record goalscorer, though some historians disagree. Sam Kelly investigates

On March 1, in La Bombonera, Martín Palermo scored the opener in Boca Juniors’ 3‑1 win over Huracán. Luciano Figueroa would score the hosts’ other two, but the following day it was Palermo on the front pages. Not only was it his first goal – in his third appearance and first start – after six months out with a knee injury, but it was his 195th in official competition for the club. He had just become the highest goalscorer in Boca’s history. Except for one thing: there’s a player who got more than 195 goals for Boca. Roberto Cherro, whose spell with the club lasted from 1926 until 1938, scored 221 times, and Palermo is still some way off that.

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