After being barred from wearing an offensive jersey connected to the Hillsborough tragedy, a soccer fan chuckles

An individual who wore a jersey at last month’s FA Cup final that made disrespectful allusion to the Hillsborough Stadium tragedy, in which 97 Liverpool supporters perished, was banned from football events for four years on Monday.

After being given his penalty, which also included a fine of 1,000 pounds ($1,280), James White grinned and laughed.

At Willesden Magistrates’ Court in London, White, 33, pleaded guilty to displaying threatening or abusive writing that was likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress.

At the FA Cup final on June 3 at Wembley Stadium, White donned a Manchester United shirt with the number “97” and the words “Not Enough” on the back. Manchester City defeated United, a fierce rival of Liverpool, 2-1 in the game.

The Football Association said that after seeing the obscene clothing on social media, security found the wearer and arrested him.

District Judge Mark Jabbitt said, “It is difficult to imagine a more… offensive reference to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.”

The court continued, stating that White’s shirt had a “hateful expression” and carried a “abhorrent message,” adding that the consequences of his conduct are “profound and distressing.”

After being detained, White reportedly said to police, “You haven’t even asked me what the T-shirt means,” according to testimony. Grandad didn’t have enough children when he passed away at age 97.

White, according to the prosecution, had “many” prior convictions, the most recent of which was in 2021, but none of them included football.

The Hillsborough disaster happened during an FA Cup semifinal game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in Sheffield, a city in northern England, when tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters invaded a standing-room area behind a goal in the crammed stadium. In Britain’s greatest sports tragedy, victims were trampled, smashed against metal barricades, or smothered.

After an original inquest determined that the tragedy was an accident, fans were given the responsibility for years, but a further investigation in 2016 placed the blame on police, the ambulance service, and the club that plays at the stadium, Sheffield Wednesday.

Football stadiums continue to reverberate negatively about the Hillsborough catastrophe and subsequent tragedies in the game via what the Premier League has dubbed ‘tragedy chanting’.

Chelsea issued an apology for its supporters’ taunting of the visiting Liverpool team with chants that referenced Hillsborough two months earlier. A few days before, City had offered Liverpool an apology for similar choruses of applause. Before their meeting in Liverpool in March, Liverpool and United made a combined plea to the crowd to put a stop to racist chanting.

The incident was “very personal” for those present at Hillsborough that day, according to Diane Lynn, vice chair of the Hillsborough Survivor Supporters Alliance, and survivors experienced “guilt” as a result.

She reacted angrily when White made her and her family feel this way.