Jürgen Klopp has said Uefa’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, should not resign over the appalling organisation of last season’s Champions League final but there must be accountability for relocating the game to “the worst possible” venue in Paris.
An independent panel commissioned by Uefa found European football’s governing body bore “primary responsibility” for the dangerous scenes outside Stade de France last May, when the actions of Liverpool supporters helped prevent a “mass fatality catastrophe”.
Ceferin, who will stand unopposed for re-election for another four years in April, has presided over several chaotic and dangerous finals in recent years, including the 2020 European Championship at Wembley and last season’s Europa League final in Seville. But Klopp believes Uefa officials who chose the French capital to host the final when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ruled out Saint Petersburg should consider their positions instead of the president.
Asked whether Ceferin, who has not commented on the panel’s damaging findings, should resign, the Liverpool manager replied: “No. I’m not sure who made the decision, to be honest. I’m the boss of some people as well, and on a lot of things I’m not 100% on the subject. So I get information from different people and then you make a decision. The better the information you get, the better the decisions are.
“I don’t think Mr Ceferin made the decision but somebody put all the papers together saying what the best place is. I can’t see him flying to Paris or Rome or Berlin and saying: ‘Oh, it’s not that good.’ There are other people who bring that together. Maybe one of them should have a think if there is not a better place for them in another job, I don’t know.
“But I think Paris was the worst possible [place] available in that specific area on that day. In the short term. It’s not a stadium that is used to it every week, every two weeks, like a lot of big stadiums in Europe are. Big cities in Europe where they play every two weeks are much more used for different reasons. You could have gone to Wembley – I don’t know the last time it was there, maybe it doesn’t work [because of that] – but it was a special situation. You could have gone to Berlin. Madrid [Bernabéu] is in a rebuild but other places were probably available. From the first moment, I thought it wasn’t a good idea [to be in Paris] but in the end this specific place could have been organised much better than it was.”
Klopp, who had family members caught up in the chaos of Paris, added: “In the moment Uefa makes the decision, I think they make it because they think it’s right, of course. What other reason could it be? But some people who work there should have done better. Everybody who was there knows the people who work there didn’t know 100% what exactly they were doing. They are not used to big crowds.
“You cannot work with volunteers on a day like this when so many people arrive there. Volunteers for the first or second time, that doesn’t work; you need experienced people and then it can be a great day. But this day, obviously it was different.”
