Abuse on football terraces is rampant. Why hasn’t it been stamped out?

An ugly, anything goes verbal antagonism permeates much of British football culture. From Arsenal fans chanting about Emmanuel Adebayor, their former player who went on to play for Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Crystal Palace, “Adebayor, three died in Angola, it should have been four”, through West Ham supporters doing gas chamber hissing when playing Tottenham Hotspur and their sizeable Jewish fanbase, to the sectarian bigotry that festers whenever Celtic play Rangers, football provides opportunity and cover for the kind of behaviour regarded as intolerable in any other circumstance. In what may be the latest example, a man was charged with displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress after wearing a shirt allegedly referencing the Hillsborough disaster at Saturday's FA Cup final.

Earlier this season, ahead of the game between the two clubs at Anfield, the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp and his United counterpart Erik ten Hagissued a joint statement condemning what they called “tragedy chanting”. The rivalry between the two sides is electric enough, they reckoned, without it being bespoiled by ugly songs.

“Those responsible tarnish not only the reputation of our clubs but also, importantly, the reputation of themselves, the fans, and our great cities,” said Ten Hag.

Not that some of his team’s supporters were listening. As their side sank to a 7-0 defeat, their response was to ratchet up the antagonism.

“The Sun was right, you’re murderers,” some United fans sang as they stood forlornly in the Anfield Road stand. They added: “Always the victims, it’s never your fault.”

Challenge anyone singing – and plenty of socially aware United fans do – and the reaction is always the same: a hefty dose of whataboutery. No matter the club involved, this has long been the excuse at the football: we’re only doing it to them because they did it to us first.

The fact is, United vs Liverpool games have, since the late 1970s, been soundtracked by a chorus of tragedy tennis. And it is true, the Liverpool fans may well have been the first at it. Back when football hooliganism was becoming commonplace, many a Liverpool follower resented the manner in which the Munich air disaster in 1958, when eight young United players lost their lives, had invested the club with what they reckoned as an unearned “phoenix from the ashes” romance and glamour. In order to belittle its significance – and in the process madden United supporters – they took to mocking the crash. “Who’s that lying on the runway,” they would sing. Munich 58 banners were frequently spotted on the Anfield terraces, the words sprayed onto walls around the ground.

United fans would respond with iconoclasm of their own, assaulting the Anfield mythology by rewording “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, the Liverpool anthem, as “sign on, sign on cos you’ll never get a job”. Or when the renowned Liverpool manager Bill Shankly died, responding to chants of “Munich 58” with “Shankly 81”. After 39 fans – 32 of them Italian, four Belgian, two French, one Northern Irish – were crushed to death after a charge by drunken Liverpool followers at the European Cup final against Juventus at Heysel in 1985, the United supporters took the moral high ground. When their rivals boasted in song about how many European Cups their side had won, they would come back with “without killing anyone, we won it three times”.

Then in 1989 came Hillsborough. Immediately the Liverpool supporters stopped mocking Munich. They now knew tragedy was no laughing matter. Or at least the overwhelming majority did. And those among the United following who appreciated the wider issues of the disaster – how it could just as easily have been them – made it clear they were not behind any songs about it.

But still some persisted, driven by spite, fuelled by disdain. It was a sign of how hard they were, prepared to say the unthinkable. Attempts to quieten them – even from sources as respected as the club manager – were met with chants oozing superiority: “We’re Man United, we’ll sing what we want.”

And United fans are by no means alone. Never mind how often Jewish commentators point out how offensive it is, Tottenham supporters consistently chant about being “Y***”, insisting they are reclaiming the word from their rivals. At every home match at Brighton, the locals are subject to tiresome anti-gay taunts from their visitors. No doubt when Manchester City fans head to Istanbul for the Champions League final next weekend, there will be some anxious to let the world know their mockery of Munich.

Football, it seems, is the last platform of such behaviour. But the thing is, even football can change. The racist chanting that regularly besmirched the game in the 1970s and 1980s has been all but eradicated. And it has gone largely through peer pressure; the majority simply will not stand for it anymore. Such intolerance of bigotry needs to become the presiding sense at the game, it needs to reach into its ugliest fissures.

‘Red on Red’, a history of the Manchester United-Liverpool rivalry by Jim White and Phil McNulty is published by Harper North