French interior minister Gerald Darmanin on Tuesday made a partial apology for chaos at the 2022 UEFA Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool at the State France in St. Denis, while insisting fake tickets and “delinquency” were mostly to blame.
“Should things have been managed better at the Stade de France? The answer is yes. Am I partly responsible? The answer is yes,” Darmanin told RTL radio. “Of course, I readily apologize towards everyone who suffered from this bad management of the event,” he added.
After scenes of fans crowded into tight spaces and being tear-gassed by police caused outrage around Europe, Darmanin poured fuel on the fire by blaming supporters with fake tickets for the disruption.
UEFA events director Martin Kallen last week told French senators investigating the fiasco that UEFA’s count of fake tickets was far short of the tens of thousands claimed by French authorities.
“We don’t believe it’s the number mentioned in France,” he said, adding that 2,600 fake tickets were identified at turnstiles — compared with the number of 30,000 to 40,000 people with fake tickets and without tickets suggested by Darmanin.
“It was a question of fake tickets… that created the difficulties we all know about” of large crowds of fans packed into underpasses or outside locked gates, Darmanin insisted Tuesday.
He added that “if there was something that went wrong at the Stade de France, it was the fight against delinquency,” saying he had already ordered a reorganization of policing around the venue and that three major matches since had passed without incident.
While some supporters did report being victims of crime by gangs of youths before and after the match, there were also many complaints about police treatment of fans.
Disabled Liverpool fans last week told the Senate how officers sprayed tear gas at people in wheelchairs.
The English supporters have reacted with particular fury to Darmanin’s defense of the French police’s actions.
“People’s memories will forever be tarred by the lack of organisation and heavy-handed policing, and then of course the way authorities tried to deflect blame and scapegoat Liverpool fans for their incompetence,” Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram told AFP earlier this month.
Closed-circuit footage from around the stadium has also been deleted despite the Senate probe.
A government report published earlier this month said a “chain of failures” by French authorities has inflicted “severe damage” on the image of the country as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in 2024.
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© Agence France-Presse
We all know it is a NIGHTMARE to be Standing in Line at the Ticket Scanner, and someone doesn’t have their Ticket Pulled Up or they have a Problem Being Scanned… ONE Ticket, holds up things for Everyone…
Imagine 2600 tickets NOT Being able to be Scanned. And Upset Fans and Upset Ticket Managers trying to figure it out at the Gate.!?!?!?!?
Whomever “Produced” the Fake Tickets is Responsible for this Fiasco…
Who Was it.??? … How many where Liverpool Tickets and How Many where Real Madrid Tickets.???
Did the FAKE Ticket Buyer Pay via Cash or Credit Card.??? Should be easy to Track it back to Originator/Perpetrator.!!!
Better figure this out before the Olympics and Next Big Event… They will keep trying until they are Caught.
RM fans were all in the stadium. This was isolated to the Liverpool side. There were many family and friends of Pool players trapped in the queues. Robertson was the only one to speak out but not the only one with family/friends stuck in the mess. All the so called hooligans jumping the fence were clearly not liverpool fans. The sequence of events is pretty
well documented in fan videos and interviews and news reporting, so we have a pretty good
picture of the what, the why is very ellusive. Why was it setup to bottlekneck the Liverpool queue but not to deal with the queque properly and why
are the answers so difficult to come by a month on?