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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
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Ryan Paton

UEFA and French police should be apologising, not lying about Liverpool fans

"Take me back, back, back like... Ooh-na-na". It was a new low for UEFA as Camila Cabello strutted across the pitch ahead of the Champions League final.

A mixture of anger, confusion and disbelief swept across the Liverpool end as the opening ceremony still went ahead 30 minutes after the scheduled kick-off time. UEFA's commitment to the Americanisation of football was such that the glitzy performance simply had to take place, while thousands of fans with legitimate tickets remained outside the Stade de France, still being subjected to unnecessarily heavy-handed police tactics.

The Señorita singer was offended as a chorus of boos rang out throughout the routine and later issued a statement blasting LFC fans as "rude". The tweet has since been deleted, which is hopefully an indication the 25-year-old has been advised her brand of catchy pop maybe wasn't the "right vibes" to improve people's mood while innocent fans were being tear gassed.

READ MORE: UEFA lie twice in Champions League final disgrace and Liverpool will not accept it

However, a degree of sympathy should go out to the musician as it isn't her fault she found herself caught in the crossfire of the Liverpool crowd's defiant response to another grossly mismanaged event from the authorities. France's sport minister has today continued to peddle the narrative that chaos outside the ground was sparked by "thousands of British LFC fans, who turned up with fake tickets".

Amélie Oudéa-Castéra then claimed the mayhem was exacerbated by local youths, who seized an opportunity to try and get into the ground. The swathes of fan accounts and journalists accurately reporting what really caused the chaotic scenes in Saint-Denis is hopefully doing enough to overturn this attempt to abdicate the governing bodies from responsibility.

Rather than LFC fans, the spark for the weekend's mayhem came from UEFA. The organisation tried to brand itself as football's saviour during the ploy to create the Super League, but its most impressive quality is how it is continually able to find new ways to let down the people they're supposed to represent.

Fans are now used to the same old ticketing issue, which spoils the build-up to every major final. A genuine inquest and unified push for change needs to happen into the distribution of tickets, when loyal fans who fork out thousands of pounds to follow their team all season find themselves at the behest of a ballot with incredibly unfavourable odds.

All this while celebrities and those with ties to corporate sponsors are seemingly able to access as many tickets as they like to UEFA's showpiece game. The organisation has been guilty in the past of staging their finals in stadiums and cities entirely unsuited to hosting such a big match.

However, the decision to move the 2022 final to the Stade de France seemed to make complete sense as it was an 80,000-seater stadium in one of the largest and most developed cities in the world. But, even though it was expected, it felt like another kick in the teeth when Liverpool and Real Madrid fans were handed yet another paltry 20,000 allocation each.

The true reason why so many lives were put in danger on a distressing evening in Paris was down to combined organisational failings from UEFA and the French police. I arrived at the Stade de France around 6.20pm and managed to narrowly avoid the chaos due to a member of my group advising us to walk to the stadium down the canal - rather than take the much more travelled route on the Metro.

There were around a few hundred people attempting to make their way through the first security check at the now infamous underpass at the same time as me. However, the shambolic organisation was already there to be seen two hours and 40 minutes before kickoff - as a relatively small amount of people, in the context of such a huge event, were being treated in a panicked fashion by seemingly inexperienced stewards.

I was luckily able to make my way into the ground after a few minutes and remained unaware of how bad things had spiralled until concerning messages flooded in from people caught in the mayhem outside. Fans who arrived moments after I did were caught up in sickening crushes and were tear gassed by an overly aggressive police force, who quickly resorted to violent tactics.

I walked through an empty train station in Lille and was put on edge when a group of four officers walked by wearing bulletproof vests, with truncheons and guns in their waistband, despite no sign of danger. A report in the Guardian last year spoke of a sharp rise in reported hooliganism in French football.

The wave of fan disorder was attributed to pent-up aggression following the pandemic, but this was not something that impacted matches in other countries. The Liverpool end was completely dejected as the game approached full time and there were no real hopes of any equaliser - so it seemed entirely unnecessary when rows of armed police arrived on the pitch to create a barrier between the stand and the pitch.

It was another point of huge concern that this heavy police presence didn't extend to outside the stadium perimeters, when large numbers of Liverpool and Real Madrid fans were mugged as they made their way back home from Saint-Denis.

The organisational failings soured the occasion and made it feel as though Liverpool FC hadn't even competed in the biggest game in club football that night. A fanbase famed for its ability to generate a raucous atmosphere only really managed to fill the Stade de France with noise during the 'Allez Allez Allez' amid Camila Cabello's performance.

While Camila might have been hurt at first, it's now clear this was a fierce retort against UEFA and the French police after supporters' harrowing experiences getting into the stadium - and the subsequent shameless attempt from the authorities to control the narrative and pin the blame on fan behaviour.

In the minds of Liverpool FC supporters, the match that took place on Saturday wasn't against Real Madrid, it was the start of another battle against the powers-that-be, who have still yet to admit responsibility for what went on.

Usually after the loss of a final, supporters will demand an inquest into the team's performance and what went wrong on the pitch, but after the events over the weekend, the fans' demand - backed up this time even by Conservative government ministers - is an inquiry into how the governing bodies failed them so drastically.

There must be an admission of responsibility from UEFA and the French police, along with a full retraction of the initial claims that fans were to blame, to ensure the harrowing scenes from Saturday are never able to happen again.

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