France’s interior minister has said he regrets the “disorganised welcome” Liverpool fans received at the Champions league final on Saturday but blamed counterfeit ticket sales on an “industrial scale” for chaotic scenes at the Stade de France, reports The Guardian.
“We deplore a lack of organisation in the way the English fans were received,” Gérald Darmanin told a press conference on Monday. But he said 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool fans had turned up for the game either without tickets or with counterfeits.
As a Downing St spokesperson described the scenes on Saturday as “deeply upsetting and concerning” and urged a full investigation, Darmanin said the fact that Liverpool supporters had been issued with paper rather than digital tickets had enabled “massive, industrial-scale and organised fraud with fake tickets”.
Uefa announced on Monday night it had commissioned an independent report into events, which it said would “examine decision-making, responsibility and behaviours of all entities involved in the final”. It will be carried out by Dr Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, a member of the Portuguese parliament and former member of the World Anti-Doping Agency Foundation Board.
About 70% of tickets presented by about 62,000 Liverpool fans were fake, the French interior minister said, and whereas 97% of Real Madrid fans had made it to their seats by the original 9pm kick-off time, only 50% of Liverpool supporters had reached their stands by then. Liverpool received an allocation of 19,618 tickets.
“Manifestly, this kind of incident only seems to happen with certain English clubs,” Darmanin said, noting that there had been difficulties at the Liverpool-Tottenham Champions League final in Madrid in 2019 and at matches at Wembley.
The match finally kicked off 36 minutes late, with some ticket-holders complaining they were not let in. Darmanin acknowledged police had been caught off-guard by about 300-400 local youths who turned up to cause trouble, but said France had only had three months to prepare after the game was moved from St Petersburg.
Television footage showed images of young men, who did not appear to be wearing Liverpool colours, climbing over the stadium fences and jumping inside. Other fans outside, including families with children, were teargassed by riot police. Liverpool’s chief executive, Billy Hogan, said the treatment of fans was “unacceptable”.
France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, said France recognised “we have to improve on the organisation of these tricky matches”, including through better management of fan flows from local stations to the stadium, filtering and digital ticketing.
The minister, speaking after a meeting with officials and representatives from the police, local and regional government, Uefa, the French football federation and stadium management, earlier told French radio the problems had been exacerbated by a shortage of stewards and over-tight checkpoints outside the venue precinct.
She also said Liverpool should bear some responsibility, alleging that Real Madrid “organised their travelling supporters’ arrival with chartered coaches, in contrast with Liverpool, which left its supporters to their own devices”.