Champions League final chaos: France picks up the trophy for incompetence
The showcase event of European football, the final of the Champions League, was marred by numerous incidents at the Stade de France in the northern suburbs of Paris on Saturday night. Hundreds of Liverpool fans were 'kettled', blocked at the entrance to the stadium, and then tear or pepper gassed by police officers before the club's match with Real Madrid. As Ilyes Ramdani writes in this opinion article, this failure comes on the back of years spent by the French public authorities pursuing a repressive, incompetent and often violent approach to maintaining order at public events.
FrenchFrench know-how is being exported to the world. Reserved for a long time for troubled city suburbs, then used against the 'yellow vest' protestors and afterwards for any form of demonstration, France's failed approach to maintaining law and order was beamed live to more than 300 million television viewers around the world on Saturday evening.
