Medical staff tends to an injured fan following the 1985 Euro Cup final in Belgium -- 39 were killed in the disaster. David Cannon/Getty Images

It was the day everyone tried to forget. The day everyone wanted to erase from memory. Everyone, that is, but the families of 39 men, women and children who lost their lives on May 29, 1985, at the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus.

But fate works in mysterious ways. The game has a unique opportunity to confront its past on the 20th anniversary of European soccer's greatest public tragedy. Last week's Champions League quarterfinals draw pitted Juventus against Liverpool on April 5 in what is bound to be one of the most emotional nights of the year.

For those who don't know, what came to be known as the Heysel tragedy (after the name of the stadium in Brussels, which hosted the match and since has been renamed) changed the face of the European game. Before kickoff, fighting between both sets of fans led English supporters to storm the adjacent stands (which should have been filled with "neutral" fans but, in fact, contained many Juve supporters). The Juve fans were driven back against a wall, which soon collapsed, and 39 people were killed in the scrum.

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The situation degenerated largely because of inadequate security measures and insufficient policing, and to this day, that's pretty much all both camps can agree on. In his book, Le verità sull'Heysel (The Truths of Heysel), Italian journalist Francesco Caremani points out that each side has its own version of events. In England, the story goes, Liverpool fans were provoked by Juventus supporters, who then fled and died when a wall collapsed on top of them. In Italy, many believe that innocent fans were butchered by rampaging hooligans and, in fact, the collapse of the wall actually helped minimize the death toll, as it allowed fans to escape.

The impact on the European game was enormous. English clubs, who until that point had been dominating continental competitions, were banned from inter-European competition indefinitely (they were readmitted in 1990; Liverpool had to wait until a year later). When Heysel was taken into consideration with the Hillsborough tragedy (an even greater catastrophe in 1989, when 96 were crushed to death), English authorities were able to pass new legislation making grounds safer and easier to police, which eventually helped eradicate hooliganism almost completely.