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Both of these have been touched by truly tragic events, which always add a tinge of poignancy to their many successes on the field.

On Feb. 6 1958, a plane carrying Manchester United players, staff and supporters as well as journalists who reported on the team crashed trying to takeoff from Munich-Riem airport, after a refuelling stop on the way back from a match in Belgrade. The crash claimed the lives of 23 of the 44 people on board, including eight United players.

Some three decades later, two stadium disasters would affect Liverpool Football Club. First was the Heysel Disaster in 1985, when crowd disturbances at the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus resulted in the deaths of 39 Juve fans. UEFA initially placed all the blame on Liverpool fans, resulting in a five year ban from European competition for all English clubs. However, a Belgian court ruled that the host nation's police and football authorities were ultimately responsible.

Four years after Heysel, Liverpool was again involved in a horrendous crush at a football ground. A total of 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives as a result of the Hillsborough Disaster, causing the FA cup semi-final with Nottingham Forest to be abandoned after just six minutes. Despite almost constant campaigning and numerous inquests and inquiries, no one has ever been held legally responsible for the disaster.

Despite the terrible human cost of each of these tragedies, they have not been off-limits for certain sections of both United and Liverpool fans in order to goad and taunt each other.

While the game has made great strides to eradicate widespread hooliganism at matches over the past 30 years—partly as a result of the Taylor Report which followed in the wake Hillsborough—it is far more difficult to act against the sort of tasteless jibes and chants that do little else other than to trivialise the many lives lost and ruined by these incidents and only increase the animosity between two sets of football fans.