The incidents that broke out on the sidelines of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid on Saturday evening at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis (93) are “the UEFA fiasco and by no means the police fiasco”estimated on franceinfo Sunday May 29 Matthieu Valet, spokesperson for the Independent Union of Police Commissioners (SCIP).
>> Champions League: forced screening, climbed barriers, counterfeit tickets … What we know about the incidents that delayed the final
Matthew Valet “pays tribute to the 6,800 police officers and gendarmes mobilized” on the two fan zones as well as at the Stade de France and, if he recognizes that “Not everything was perfect unfortunately”he considers it to be “the UEFA fiasco and by no means the police fiasco”.
“We tried to do the best. Overall the results are positive for Paris intramural and for the Stade de France, UEFA will have to examine its conscience.”
Matthew Valetat franceinfo
He points to UEFA’s responsibility in its organisation, “in terms of ticket checks, in terms of security by stewards and private security guards who really posed a problem”. He explains that it is “non-detection of counterfeit banknotes” which caused “a traffic jam” at the entrance to the stadium and from there “everything came together”.
Also reacting to the testimonies of Liverpool supporters who complained of having been the target of tear gas from the police, the SCIP spokesman explained: “There were troublemakers. There were people who wanted to break into the Stade de France wildly, there were a few very scattered fights and there was sometimes the use of tear gas.”
Matthieu Valet also mentions acts of delinquency around the Stade de France, due to “professional thugs, mostly minors” who have “robbed a lot of tourists, who wanted to break into the stadium and gave the police a hard time”. The quarantine of police custody still in progress essentially relates to “throwing projectiles, thefts of pickpockets, snatching, for example of tickets or mobile phones”.
For the spokesperson for the Independent Union of Police Commissioners, there is “three areas of improvement” to prevent such incidents from happening again. First of all, “we have to adapt the architecture and operation of the stadium in relation to these new issues” what are the terrorist threat, hooliganism and counterfeit money. “Then there must be stronger coordination between UEFA, which wanted to manage everything on its own” and police forces. And finally, UEFA must be better prepared for the events of “delinquency of opportunity.”