For once it is the still photos that capture the scene better than the videos. Were one to base one’s impression of the hellscape in Paris on Saturday night on the grainy, shaky moving footage alone, one would probably conclude it was a lawless, seething moshpit of disorder: of youths scaling spiked fences, gates being rattled and clattered, a ceaseless stream of teargas and baton charges. But the overwhelming sensation being conveyed by the thousands of fans massed outside the Stade de France was stasis: the quiet, festering frustration of nothing moving, nothing changing, nothing happening, a sea of thwarted humanity waiting patiently for hour upon hour, as if queueing for bread.
So much for the what. The manifold indignities and inconveniences visited upon fans at the Champions League final on Saturday – long lines, denial of entry, a lack of stewarding and security, police brutality – have been well documented in the subsequent days. What is missing from all this is any sense of the why. Why did Uefa and the French authorities allow this showpiece occasion to degenerate so catastrophically? Was it simply a large-scale outbreak of bureaucratic incompetence? Or was something more sinister at work?
