Liverpool fans were unfairly blamed for the fiasco surrounding the Champions League final for “diverting attention” from organizational failures, says a scathing report from the French Senate.
The Senate, the upper house of the French parliament, released its provisional conclusions on Wednesday, 46 days after the highlight of the event at the Stade de France, which was overshadowed by public problems before and after the match.
Liverpool fans were sprayed with tear gas and the match was delayed by more than half an hour to deal with the crowds around the stadium, before the French government’s initial response condemned Reds fans and accused them of arrive with false entries.
The Senate report found rhetoric masked by failures by French authorities around the organization of the match, saying: “It is unfair to have wanted Liverpool fans to take responsibility for the riots, as to make the Minister of the Interior. to divert attention from the inability of the state to properly manage the crowds present and to curb the action of several hundred violent and coordinated criminals. “
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Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol says events outside the Stade de France do not coincide with what French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin called fraud.
The report found that the chaos had been caused by a “chain of events and malfunction” in the days and hours leading up to the start.
He added: “The systems implemented had major shortcomings in terms of intelligence (absence of thugs but the presence of criminals in large numbers), the transport routes of the fans (elimination of a downhill route around the stadium ) .and insufficient communication.
“It’s not just in execution where problems arose. Upstairs, crisis scenarios weren’t worked out enough and they didn’t show the necessary flexibility in the face of so many contingencies.”
The report’s co-chair, Laurent Lafon, said he had been accepted by all senators involved in the investigation and that it was caused by a “chain of administrative errors” that allowed all parties to feel guilty. another person.
“The seriousness of what happened at the Stade de France shows that there are a lot of decisions to be made to prevent this from happening again at the Rugby World Cup or the Olympics,” he said.
“It is unfair to have tried to blame Liverpool supporters for the riots as Home Secretary. [Gérald Darmanin] has done to divert attention from the inability of the state to properly manage the crowd.
“There was a need to communicate clearly about the transport of fans from the train station between the police chief, the French Football Federation and the train operators, but that did not happen.
Image: Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold reacts at the end of the Champions League final football match between Liverpool and Real Madrid at the Stade de France in Saint Denis, near Paris, Saturday 28 May 2022 Real Madrid defeated Liverpool 1-0. (Photo AP /
“We recommend communicating more with football fans and improving the attractiveness of the area around the Stade de France so that people are ready to arrive soon.
“We want the authorities’ view on football fans to change, it’s a firm recommendation we’re making.”
What happened in the Champions League final?
The iconic match between Liverpool and Real Madrid at the Stade de France in May was overshadowed by serious problems around the stadium.
Dangerous crushes were formed as a result of access problems and many fans received tear gas or pepper spray from the police.
Some relatives of Jurgen Klopp experienced the problem in the first person, but did not say it in German until later.
French senators last month demanded that the state acknowledge responsibility and identify the culprits behind the chaos outside the national stadium that soiled the event.
They also questioned why government officials allowed the surveillance video to be removed from the scene, in which police smoked fans and families instead of ordering it to be handed over to investigators.
Liverpool Fans Association president Ted Morris also explained what happened on the day of the Champions League final in the French Senate.
Morris told Sky Sports News: “We arrived at the station at 3pm and it was surprising that there were no police officers.
“We headed to the stadium and went to a McDonald’s for three hours. In those three hours, I had never seen so many stolen fans in my life, it was one after the other. It was absolutely weird. That it gave us a glimpse of how that day was going.
“Then we headed to the soft ticket control area, which was just not fit for its purpose. There were only local people coming in. I had a conversation with one of our Merseyside police officers about at 6.15 pm and was very concerned about the events.
“It was chaotic. There was no organization, no police presence on the turnstiles to help or even act as a deterrent.
“I had no interest in the game because, for two hours, I received text messages from people at the club and our disabled fans about the anxiety going on outside, so the match became irrelevant. We could have won 6- 0 and I still wouldn’t have cared.
“I was going to leave in the middle and I got a message saying don’t go out in the middle, it’s not safe. So we stayed until the 86th minute, we left the floor and the commissioner didn’t open the door. We had a heated discussion and it opened the door because there were still many locals trying to get in.
“We headed to the metro station called La Plaine. We passed under the underpass and there were a lot of cops there. When we got out of the underpass, literally in a minute, there were hundreds of locals on our right they were attacking us.I am in a wheelchair and it scared me.
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Paris police chief Didier Lallement apologizes to Liverpool fans who were in the Champions League final after some received tear gas outside the Stade de France.
“There were bottles raining, there were knives; they were running, assaulting people and running out. And when we finally got to the train station, the police gave us tear gas. I’ll never understand that, no matter how they were. try to explain it.
“We went up to the accessible lift on the platform and there was a six-year-old girl with a Liverpool team with her father. Her eyes were running, red and she was completely and utterly traumatized. All she had fact was going to Paris to see a football festival and how she will never be able to go to a football match or even trust the authorities is beyond me. It was unnecessary and absolutely horrible. “
“It’s not just Liverpool fans, it’s all football fans”
Speaking to Sky Sports News, John Gibbons of The Anfield Wrap explained how the anti-treatment campaign is on behalf of the football community at large.
“Expect to hear about more responsibility,” he said. “The appointments we have received from UEFA are a disgrace to be honest with you, so they don’t seem to take any responsibility.
“The blame has been placed on the fans in the same way as the ministers of the French government. I want responsibilities and I also want no football fan to have to endure what we have gone through.
“It’s not about Liverpool fans, it’s about all the football fans feeling they can go and play the game. That was in Madrid, it was in Kyiv and it should have been in Paris.
“You want UEFA guarantees that in the future they will make sure that it is much smoother and that fans who have spent a lot of money to be there are treated much better and are safer.
“After what we had gone through, we couldn’t care much about the result, and it was a Champions League final.”