Understand and draw lessons from the fiasco. After the scenes of chaos that occurred on Saturday evening during the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid at the Stade de France, first explanations were put forward on Monday. Liverpool and Paris pass the buck, the Minister of the Interior denouncing a “massive fraud” with counterfeit tickets. The Bobigny public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation for organized fraud.
The subject is delicate and the world has its eyes fixed on Paris, the images of jostling, attempts to intrude into the stadium and supporters gassed by the police with tear gas canisters having gone around the world. “We deplore the incidents (…) and regret that some supporters with tickets were unable to attend the match”, said the Ministry of Sports on Sunday. UEFA has undertaken to compensate to give “compensation” to 2,700 private match ticket holders due to the incidents, out of the 79,000 sold.
What happened ?
With the approach of the meeting, initially scheduled for 9:00 p.m., huge queues formed on the outskirts of the stadium, where the filtering of supporters was done in dribs and drabs, to the point that UEFA postponed kick-off by 36 minutes, an unprecedented event in the recent history of the event.
At least a thousand supporters were left stranded, shouting “Open the gate” (“open the gate”). Then some intrusion attempts from people without a ticket have undermined the device. Tear gas was fired to prevent a few dozen individuals from climbing the barriers.
“There were jostling, crowd movements, we provided answers”, explained a police source, while 105 people were arrested. Some English fans, who came with family, complained of being targeted. “I am a teacher, I have never been sprayed with tear gas before. (…) The police pushed me against the door, it was not necessary. They behaved as if they had an army in in front of them”, complained, in tears, Pete Blades, a 57-year-old French teacher in Liverpool. The queues only cleared up at halftime.
Paris denounces a “massive fraud of counterfeit banknotes”
At the end of an interministerial meeting organized on Monday with the organizers of the final, the police and the local authorities, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin denounced a “massive, industrial and organized fraud of counterfeit banknotes”. Based on a first report submitted to the Minister on Sunday by the Paris police chief, Didier Lallement, he indicates that “30,000 to 40,000 English supporters found themselves at the Stade de France, either without tickets or with falsified tickets”. Didier Lallement has also decided to take legal action for a “massive counterfeit fraud”. This Monday, the Bobigny prosecution finally opened an investigation for organized fraudlearned franceinfo, confirming information from the Parisian.
According to the report of the Paris police chief, “70%” paper tickets presented for pre-filtering were “fake”, underlined the Minister and, “once past this pre-filtering, more than 15%” were fake. “We have to look at where these counterfeit notes come from”indicated the new Minister of Sports, but “we believe that the fraud comes from the other side of the Channel”added Gérald Darmanin.
Invited on RTL this Monday morning, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra was not kind to the Liverpool club, accusing him of having “left his supporters in the wild” unlike Real Madrid, which accompanied its supporters from start to finish. At 9:00 p.m., the scheduled time for the finally delayed kick-off, “97% of Spanish supporters were present in their stands” versus “Only 50% of British supporters”supported the Minister of the Interior.
London and Liverpool denounce “calamitous” management
In England, supporters returning from Paris, the Liverpool club, local and national authorities did not take off. And the accusations from Paris didn’t help. The mayor of the city of Liverpool said to herself “disgusted by the calamitous management and brutal treatment” inflicted on the fans.
While the Liverpool police, present around the Stade de France, judged that “the vast majority” English supporters “behaved in an exemplary manner”, Downing Street, for its part, said to itself “extremely disappointed” by the treatment inflicted on them and judged the images of the Stade de France “deeply disturbing and concerning”.
“It was absolutely awful” denounced British MP Ian Byrne, who was present on Saturday. “To treat the fans like animals in Europe’s biggest game of the year, as they did, is unforgivable” he said at the microphone of the Sky News television channel, implicating “Lamentable policing, lamentable stewards, poor management around the stadium, closed stadium gates”.
In France, the group of senators CRCE, with a communist majority, announced on Monday in a press release the forthcoming tabling of a motion for a resolution “aiming to pacify the maintenance of order in France and to draw lessons from the escalation of violence and the disproportionate use of public force by the authorities”.
“The fans deserve to know what happened”Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman added, urging UEFA to “to work closely with the French authorities in a full investigation” and to publish findings.
Malfunctions
“The priority now is to very precisely identify the malfunctions (…) in order to learn all the lessons to prevent such incidents from happening again for our future major international sporting events”, insisted the Ministry of Sports and the Olympic Games this Monday morning, one year from the 2023 Rugby World Cup and two years from the Paris 2024 Olympics. Especially since the Stade de France, where the athletics events will take place, will be one of the nerve centers. France must “(to) improve” in the management “risky matches” admitted Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.
Bottlenecks
“We saw that we had to improve (…) on certain aspects of the management of flows leaving transport in areas of first filtering, second filtering”estimated the minister, who mentioned “a problem of cramped control areas” while the pre-filtering system 200 meters from the stadium was overwhelmed by the influx of supporters of Liverpool and created bottlenecks.
RATP strike
According to two representatives of supporters present at the Stade de France, a problem of referral of the crowd has accentuated the congestion. Coming preferably by RER D because of strikes affecting RER BLiverpool supporters found themselves faced with only 4 pre-filtering accesses, while there were 13 accesses at the exit of RER B, reports one of these sources to AFP. “This created a phenomenon of suffocation and crushing on the side of the RER D”she points out, lamenting a lack of stewards to guide the flow.
Lack of stewards
Close to 7,000 police, gendarmes and firefighters were mobilized, not to mention the private security guards, and Gérald Darmanin defended the security system put in place by the Paris police headquarters: “Without the decisions taken by the police and the prefect, there would have been deaths”, he says. On the other hand, the Minister of Sports pointed out “certainly a lack of stewards at the level of what had been planned by the French Football Federation”.
Fake tickets
UEFA also denounced the influx of thousands of spectators with counterfeit tickets. “There were “blockchain” tickets (digitally authenticated, Ed) but UEFA has ceded at the request of Liverpool “who asked for 20,000 paper tickets”, explains a source close to the organization to AFP. There have been “photocopies, rough imitations, others very well done”.
“We have a project to secure, that there is a systematization of electronic ticketing and also to ensure that we have means of preventing fraud at this ticketing office”, admitted the sports ministers.
Preparation time too short
It usually takes more than a year to prepare such an event planetary. But after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the French Football Federation (FFF) recovered the organization initially entrusted to Saint Petersburg at the end of February.
And this reduced time may have weighed, as UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin hinted on Friday in an interview with AFP: “I said to my teams: ‘Don’t tell me you need a year or two, because we only have three weeks’. It’s not easy”, he pointed out.
A source close to the executive admitted insufficient mobility of the police, who “overreacted” in the face of festive events, against a backdrop of“insufficient preparation”and of “undervaluation of the number of supporters”.
The Senate will hear the ministers
Two days after the events, the Senate announced on Monday that it wanted to hear Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castera this week. They will be heard jointly by the Law and Culture Commissions.
In a press release, the two senatorial commissions specify that they want “understand the circumstances that led to this situation” and “determine the responsibilities of the various national and international actors concerned”.
“Fifteen months from the organization of the Rugby World Cup and twenty-two months from the holding of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, the incidents have given a sad image of France and arouse serious concerns”, deplore the commissions. The hearing, open to the press, will be broadcast live on the Senate website. The exact date has not yet been confirmed.
“At this stage”the Senate will begin by hearing the ministers and “adjust to” its decisions according to the answers given, indicated François-Noël Buffet (LR), president of the Law Commission. “If the information does not seem sufficient to us, we will consider going further”, he added.
“Obviously the official version of the chaos at the Stade de France given by the government is out of step with the facts. As if it were necessary to hide the responsibility of the usual scum. The Senate will have to participate in the manifestation of the truth by an independent control “, the leader of senators LR Bruno Retailleau reacted on Twitter on Sunday.