As Liverpool FC come to terms with their Champions League final defeat, football is left to rue yet more shambolic scenes that threaten fans' safety and raise questions over the conduct of organisers and police.
Pictures and video emerged of the scenes outside the Stade de France in St Denis of fans struggling to get into the stadium for the showpiece event, alongside police tactics that should prompt investigations into matchday conduct.
Liverpool have issued a statement since the delayed kick-off, saying the club are "hugely disappointed" with admission into the stadium and that they have officially requested an investigation into events.
READ MORE: Thibaut Courtois sends message of support to Liverpool fans after Paris chaos
The Irish Mirror spoke to one Liverpool fan who went to the match.
Michael Kettiros gave an insight into a situation where police were batoning and tear-gassing fans, while an estimated 20,000 Liverpool supporters were herded to a small number of entry points.
Kettiros has been at every Liverpool Champions League final appearance since 2005, spanning Istanbul, Athens, Kyiv, Madrid and the French capital.
Saturday's experience, in his view, was the worst of them all.
"[Paris] was one of the most shambolic. I know the news has been focusing on fans trying to get in late, but there is quite a lot more maturity among fans now and people get to the grounds early.
"Officially, we were told that the facilities would be open from 6pm but I got there at 5pm - four hours before kick-off. The main stadium Metro station is where most people were coming into if you weren't coming from coaches. A lot of Real Madrid fans were coming in on official coaches which were being parked round the other side.
"There were more Liverpool fans anyway, and when you came out of the station they had cordoned off certain road so you had to go one way. This led to one entry point to the stadium, where a lot of the madness was happening."
Kettiros explained the contrast in treatment between fans of the Premier League club and those of the La Liga champions.
"You had all of the fans coming in and coming to one main entry point. But, because I was there early enough, I was able to go around the whole stadium. You had loads of Madrid fans round the other side with bar areas, then on top of that you had all of the local youths.
"There were hundreds and hundreds of them literally running riot. They weren't necessarily malicious but they were young and seemed pretty disenfranchised. There is history of fighting with the police, but that area is not one of the more affluent areas of Paris and some of the streets heading away from the stadium heading away from the ground looked really, really unsafe.
"The main problem was that they were so terrible at filtering people to the relevant gates that people were all congregating in one area.
"There were not too many fans actually getting there late, but there were loads of fans with fake tickets but there was no way that this was a big contributing factor to all of the hold-ups."
Earlier in the day, Parisian police did not seem to be in control of a situation that most city's police forces have to deal with in some capacity on a fortnightly basis.
"You had lines of police who were not really in tune with what was going on and an individual person checking people's tickets, and scanning people's phones. That, in itself, was taking ages. You then had another person checking tickets, and then another small checkpoint further on. It was so badly organised.
"When you got nearer to the game they swapped out most of the police for the ones that looked like Robocop, and all of them had a canister of tear gas in an aerosol and they had absolutely no concern about using it.
"They were using that at the main Liverpool end, and some of the other entrances as well. From what I saw, Madrid fans found it a lot easier because they were smaller in volume and getting off coaches. They found it a lot easier to get in.
"You are obviously going to have people trying to bunk in, that goes without saying. That has always happened. But not in large enough numbers that that can be blamed."
Aside from the growing sense of unease among a set of fans who would be more in tune with the dangers of inadequate policing than most, locals were also contributing to an increasingly-choatic scene.
"You also had young, local kids trying to bunk in - climbing bridges and trees. I saw one guy fall from a bridge he was hanging off.
"At times they would just close the entry points with no explanation to the fans. They would just spray a bit of tear gas.
"There were some guys showing their legitimate tickets and they would say 'No, I'm not letting you in - but if you want to give me €50 I will.'
"A huge amount of blame has to be put on the organisation of it."
Kettiros, now returned from Paris, is just thankful that the outcome was not much worse.
"It's a strange setup, with the stadium and the streets around it. There were some narrow residential streets that lead up to the ground. It's not set up perfectly anyway, but it was a perfect storm yesterday.
"There were loads of people and locals, complete disorganisation and police just standing around hitting people - with the odd person checking tickets at the same time.
"It was not a pleasant experience but at least no-one - hopefully - was seriously injured. It's at that point now where you are just glad that everyone got home ok and move on."
