Regarding the incidents that took place on the sidelines of the Champions League final in Paris on Saturday May 28, “the victims of a faulty system were first of all the supporters”, denounces Sunday on franceinfo Ronan Evain, general manager of Football Supporters Europe (FSE). He who was at the Stade de France to follow the match ensures that “the conclusions drawn by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Sports are very far from the observations that we were able to make before the match.” It also describes “old problems” of organization around this enclosure.
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franceinfo: What was this situation like? What have you seen of it?
Ronan Evain : The situation was extremely confused and I think it’s very complicated to draw conclusions today from the domino effect that led to the disruptions and delays that we experienced. What is certain is that the conclusions drawn by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Sports are very far from the observations that we were able to make before the match.
The government mainly evokes overflows from English supporters with fake tickets. The French police accuse UEFA above all of having mismanaged the situation at the Stade de France, of having undersized the system of stewards. And then the English, them, target the French authorities and the French police who would not have known how to do it. Whose fault is it ?
Precisely, this game of throwing the blame on one and the other is not going to help anyone. What is certain is that the victims of a faulty system were first of all the supporters, of Liverpool but also of Real Madrid.
For some reason unknown to me, we are focusing on the problem on the Liverpool side. But a significant number of Real supporters also missed the kick-off.
Ronan Evain, Football Supporters Europeat franceinfo
This story of counterfeits, unfortunately, is part of the culture of supporterism in Liverpool. This is a problem which is known, which is identified, which is generally well dealt with by the organizers of the finals. There were indeed, very certainly, a number of counterfeit banknotes yesterday which were also on sale in the streets of Paris, but this is a problem which was really marginal. And then normally the organizer of an event like this knows how to deal with the issue of counterfeit tickets. We check its veracity, if it is a fake ticket, the person is expelled and end of story.
On this question of counterfeit tickets which nevertheless seems to be at the origin of the problem, the French authorities speak of several thousand supporters without tickets. What is it about ?
For my part, I am convinced that there are not thousands of counterfeit notes, as indicated by the Ministry of the Interior. It is a marginal problem. A few counterfeit tickets, a few false accreditations, but the question was above all that of the people without tickets who found themselves around the Stade de France, who tried to enter in force, either by going over the turnstiles, or, to the sportiest of them, trying to get over the gates of the Stade de France. And there, for the most part, it was neither Liverpool supporters nor Real Madrid supporters, but rather young Parisians who came to try their luck around the Stade de France.
The preparation was shortened – only three months instead of a year and a half – because the final was moved from Saint Petersburg to Paris because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Do you think it could have worked?
I really hope that there will be a real analysis of what happened. It is sure that it is a colossal logistical challenge to organize a Champions League final in three months. We must now ask ourselves the question of whether France had the capacity to organize it in view of the repeated organizational difficulties around the Stade de France that we had already seen at Euro 2016, at certain Cup finals of France. These are problems that are old, that are known, that are very important.
There is an old traffic and mobility problem around the Stade de France which was exacerbated yesterday.
Ronan Evainat franceinfo
There is a very specific problem, which is that of the number of stewards available, their training, their professional quality, professional experience, which has arisen since the return to the stadium, and the Covid-19 epidemic. I fear that given the profile, experience, age and behavior of some stewards, this is a question that must also be asked: Did the organizer have enough trained professional stewards around the stadium? of France ?