The Uefa panel received 8,500 Liverpool supporters’ testimonies submitted to the club, extensive further written evidence and also conducted interviews with Liverpool and Real Madrid supporters, as well as Liverpool club officials, about their experiences.
Ted Morris, chair of the Liverpool Disabled Supporters Association
“I started receiving messages saying our disabled supporters were being gassed and crushed outside the turnstiles … they were terrified and panicking. It was harrowing to receive these messages with me unable to help them. They said the situation outside the stadium was becoming critical, and they feared for their lives. I thought many of our disabled supporters were now in danger of being crushed. This group included children with disabilities, blind fans and wheelchair users.
“In my opinion, it was only thanks to the restraint and actions shown by the supporters of Liverpool that a major disaster and probably a death were averted. No one in authority helped our disabled supporters. The saddest thing about this is that our disabled fans have arrived in Paris to attend a football festival, but at that very moment, they are in the middle of a carnival of horrors, which will leave them with long-term mental scars”.
Ian Byrne MP, Liverpool supporter
“There was very clearly a palpable feeling of fear and terrifying deja vu for LFC supporters of my generation. I was 16 at the time of Hillsborough and 50 at the time of Paris, but when I witnessed the scenes of fans being crushed against the railings at the turnstiles in gate Z, including many women and children, it chilled my soul. I was instantly taken back to Leppings Lane and April 15th 1989. I feared contemplating the potential scale of what could unfold in Paris because so many people were suffering the same experiences around the stadium.
“I feared a loss of life greater than at Hillsborough. Panic began setting in and I considered what I could do to help, both as an elected representative of parliament and as a Hillsborough survivor. I felt a profound duty of care to my fellow supporters, but I felt helpless. I did however take confidence from and pride in the absolutely magnificent behaviour of the Liverpool supporters, who kept calm despite the worst provocation I’ve ever seen at a football match by the people who were supposed to be in control of the event.”
The panel's 21 recommendations to improve safety and security at finals
1. Uefa should set up a process to ensure that the panel’s recommendations are implemented, including by other stakeholders. Uefa should publish an action plan on its website and regular updates on progress.
2. Uefa should always require that all stakeholders responsible for hosting a Champions League final follow the 2016 Council of Europe “Saint Denis Convention”. It agreed an approach towards supporters based on “safety, security and service” rather than one based on preparing for disorder.
3. Uefa should ensure that its safety and security unit has oversight and primary responsibility for the safety, security, and service component of Champions League final operations.
4. Uefa’s safety and security unit should develop its capacity to “ensure that mobility and access arrangements are as safe and secure as possible for supporters with any disabilities or special needs, and that service to them is optimised”.
5. A host stadium’s safety team should be directly and more fully involved in the planning for a match and making risk assessments.
6. Host stadiums must all have “well-managed security perimeters, welcome services and crowd guidance and orientation”.
7. Uefa should have a formal requirement in the host bidding process that police commit to compliance with the “engagement-focused” approach towards supporters agreed in the Saint Denis Convention.
8. Uefa’s safety and security unit should engage with host police commanders in advance, support access to relevant expertise and invite them to observe quarter- and semi-finals, gaining experience of clubs’ supporters. If problems are identified in the planning phase and cannot be resolved, these should be “escalated to government authorities”.
9. Uefa should move as rapidly as possible to solely digital ticketing, and ensure host venues are fully capable of supporting this. Having both digital and paper ticketing at the Paris final was a factor in causing the long delays and access problems.
10. Uefa should “optimise” its communications and messaging toward supporters regarding the match facilities, mobility, routing and access arrangements. “Above all else it should embed the involvement of supporter organisations and finalist club stewards in its communication strategy, to effectively spread information and urgent messages.”
11. Finalist clubs should have their supporter liaison officers acting as the key contact for supporters. This is already an obligation under the Uefa club licensing regulations.
12. Football Supporters Europe and its affiliated supporter organisations “need to be involved as meaningful stakeholders throughout the planning process” and their representatives need to act as “integrated observers” at the final. They should also be involved in post-match analysis.
13. Uefa should require the host FA to deploy customer service stewards at key parts of the transport network and across the final approach to the stadium, to give guidance to supporters and also provide information to control rooms.
14. Medical and first aid personnel should be always visible and accessible, including at access points, gates and in the stadium concourse.
15. Uefa’s post-match analysis process should be “more analytically and objectively robust”. Uefa should involve external “operational, academic, and supporter-based expertise”.
16: The Council of Europe monitoring committee should review how compliance with the Saint Denis convention can be better monitored and the obligations “more comprehensively enforced”.
17. The panel encourages the authorities in France to follow Council of Europe recommendations and those made by the French government official Michel Cadot, to improve management and oversight of major sporting events across ministries.
18. The French ministries of interior and sport should institute their own review of the policing model at sporting events. This should involve supporters’ representatives, experts and academics. Policing authorities should guarantee they will operate a “supporter engagement” model, and that riot police, teargas and pepper spray will only ever be used, proportionately, where deemed necessary due to a risk to life.
19. French authorities should review policy relating to retaining CCTV footage and other material for the purpose of investigations likely to improve security and public safety. Uefa should address this as a requirement from hosts.
20. Host stakeholders should “undertake robust scrutiny” to ensure their arrangements will comply with the Saint Denis convention. Uefa’s safety and security unit should be involved to ensure that compliance is being achieved during the planning process.
21. Uefa and the Council of Europe monitoring committee should look closely at their capacity to apply some of the above recommendations at other Uefa-governed fixtures besides the Champions League final, to avoid similar dangers developing. David Conn
Real Madrid supporter Pablo Sanz, about the approach to the stadium:
“In my view the main failure of organisation was right when we went out from the subway. We were caught in a trap … with zero room to move ... If anything would have happened there, I guess that dozens or hundreds of people might have died because we couldn’t move … I saw women of 70 years old, child[ren] of 10 years old really frightened … The people kept on arriving [from] the subway at a higher speed than they were exiting to the stadium. That was really frightening … Thieves started to act … I saw people [having their mobile phones stolen] with their tickets, they were reacting and there was no room, so it was really, really dangerous.”
Liverpool FC
Club officials interviewed by the panel were highly critical of the organisation and questioned Uefa’s decision to hold the final in Paris. Particular objections were made to the French police misconceptions that Liverpool supporters represented a risk of hooliganism, which included a reference to the Hillsborough disaster in the police intelligence.
The panel quotes the reaction of an official representing Liverpool: “Absolute outrage. Outrage … They’ve conflated hooliganism with Hillsborough … It’s such a calamitous error of judgment, it beggars belief. I think the mindset, to have referred to an event which happened over 30 years ago, which has been proven to have nothing to do with hooliganism and … nothing to do with the behaviour of the fans, I think just, absolutely beggars belief … We couldn’t have been more outraged and more offended on behalf of the [bereaved Hillsborough] families, on behalf of our fan base, on behalf of the club and the reputational damage that comments like that continue to do to Liverpool … our fans, but also to supporters more widely. It’s unbelievably outrageous to have made those comments.”
