Liverpool (AFP)

The conservatives are in power, relations with Europe are difficult and Kylie Minogue releases an album: welcome to England in 1990, the year of Liverpool's previous coronation in the football championship, at a time not so different from ours.

As in 2020, the United Kingdom was at the dawn of a decade of profound change, symbolized by the construction of the Channel Tunnel.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is struggling today to conclude a profitable trade agreement with the European Union, which was left in late January by the United Kingdom. In 1990, his late predecessor Margaret Thatcher was also in conflict with Brussels - and his own party - over the sensitive question of whether to join the European exchange rate mechanism.

This question had pursued the leader until the last days of her eleventh year in office, before she was replaced in November 1990.

"The United Kingdom was then in transition," Simon Chadwick, a professor specializing in sports at the Emlyon Business School, told AFP. "And now we have a conservative leader who must accept the need for the state to intervene."

Like today, the Labor Party was then relegated to the status of opposition force for more than a decade. As today with the Black Lives Matter movement or far-right groups, London was shaken by large demonstrations.

At the time, just a month before Liverpool won their title by beating the Queens Park rangers 2-1, some 200,000 people demonstrated in the streets of London against the other big question that agitated the country that year: the taxes.

The plan for an identical tax for each adult was so unpopular that it sparked some of the biggest and most violent rallies that the UK has known for years: in March, a demonstration in Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London , injured more than 200 people.

- Birth of Mr Bean-

In the musical rankings of 30 years ago and today, we also find Madonna and Elton John. The rave culture that these two icons helped to launch in the 1990s is still very present today.

Probably the most famous figure in British culture, Mr Bean was also born during this period, making his first steps on television on New Years Day 1990.

- End of hooliganism -

Ironically, one of the things that has changed the most in the UK over the past thirty years is the image of football, which in 1990 was tarnished by years of hooliganism and a series of disasters.

When Liverpool were crowned champion, the specter of the Hillsborough tragedy - where 96 club supporters died crushed in an FA Cup semifinal in 1989 - was not far off.

The victorious club was also banned from participating in the European Cup the following year, due to the involvement of its supporters in another disaster, that of the Heysel in 1985, which killed 39 people.

It was not until the summer of 1990, when England reached the World Cup semi-final and Paul Gascoigne became a world star, that English football found a smile.

But 1990 was also a key year for a young, small defender who then signed for the German second division club Mainz 05, marking the start of a career that would see him become one of the best coaches in the world. . Things have definitely changed for Jurgen Klopp.

© 2020 AFP