Two days after the Champions League final in Paris, the debates about the chaos in front of the stadium continue. After a crisis meeting with the sports minister and the European football association Uefa, France’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin insisted on Monday that the Liverpool fans were primarily responsible for the sometimes life-threatening scenes in front of the stadium. Uefa, in turn, announced in the evening that it had commissioned a report from a team led by former Portuguese sports minister Tiago Brandão Rodrigues. “The comprehensive review examines the decision-making, responsibility and behavior of all bodies involved in the final,” emphasized the association.
That should be exciting as eyewitness accounts suggest that the biggest problem on Saturday was disastrous organization at an 80,000 capacity stadium that is aesthetically attractive but a disaster from an urban point of view. Given the narrow underpasses and ramps to the stadium, safe access for crowds can hardly be guaranteed. It is to be the main stage of the Paris Olympic Games in two years time.
The large number of fans without valid final tickets have thrown the police in Paris off balance
Against this background and with the Rugby World Cup taking place next year, the events of Saturday are an image fiasco for the French government – even if the spectators expected there correspond to a different profile than football fans. According to Darmanin, the root of all evil was “massive, industrial” counterfeiting of tickets. In front of the stadium there were “30,000 to 40,000” mainly English fans with wrong or no tickets. It is doubtful whether this number is correct. According to Darmanin, he assumes that the forgery was organized “on the other side of the English Channel”.
Darmanin has accused Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp of being responsible for the high number of unticketed English fans at the stadium after his comment that Paris is “big enough to go there without a ticket and have a good time”. This had thrown the security system of the police, which protected Darmanin against every accusation, out of balance.
It was thanks to their prudent behavior that there were no deaths. This, too, contradicts eyewitness accounts, which blame the police for a shift from obvious apathy to repressive behavior. A video shows how a gendarme sprayed pepper spray in the face of a man who was completely calm.
The Liverpool police, who had sent scene-savvy officers to Paris, spoke in a statement distributed on Sunday of “exemplary behavior” by Liverpool supporters who had traveled with them. They would have gone to the stadium early. On Saturday, Uefa attributed the 37-minute delay to the late arrival of spectators.
The greatest security problems evidently arose on the route between the Stade de France train station, where, among other things, the regional train RER D, which was affected by a go-slow, stops, and the entrance to the stadium, where a first, menacingly narrow lock was built through which only people with tickets should come. According to Darmanin, 70 percent of the tickets presented were identified as false. This number is also surprising. Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra spoke of around 2,700 people who, despite valid tickets, missed Real Madrid’s 1-0 win over Liverpool. You should be compensated.
A witness sees police officers point their guns at crowds in front of the subway
Problems apparently also arose because the tickets, which could be downloaded via a Uefa app, had to be converted again into a QR code – but before the game the cell phone network around the stadium collapsed. The problem affected “countless people around me”, said a Liverpool fan who had traveled from Switzerland to the SZ. He had legally purchased a category 2 ticket for 450 euros – and was finally waved through without being checked because the pressure on the stadium gate in front of which he was standing was so great that the stewards let him in, trusting his access authorization.
The eyewitness also observed that Liverpool FC fans had lined up in front of Tor R, apparently forcing their way in. The reaction was the closing of a gate for about 15 minutes, in front of which the crowds were crowding, people were being pushed against fences – just under an hour before the originally planned start of the game. At the same time, the rush to the entrances was so great that the surrounding lane was finally opened up to smooth the way for the fans to the stadium. There was such a monumental traffic jam that both the relatives of the Real Madrid and Liverpool players were only in the stadium just after 9 p.m.
The way back for the fans was also frighteningly restless. As before the game, there were thefts on the way to the metro station, apparently committed by local youth.
The Paris correspondent of the Spanish radio station RNE told the SZ that after arresting a handful of thieves, French police officers, who seemed overwhelmed, aimed their guns at the crowd, probably to prevent the prisoners from being freed. The eyewitness said he didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if a shot had accidentally been fired given the crowded crowd. A stampede would have been inevitable.
