There was little that shocked me about Saturday night in Paris.
As someone who travels regularly from this country to watch football I’ve become conditioned to expect that my presence in certain places will be seen as an ugly threat that needs nullifying.
I arrived at the Stade de France in plenty of time alongside both sets of good-spirited supporters only to be met by police vans parked to kettle us into a tiny space in an underpass, where a small band of stewards were overwhelmed and local gangs were given a golden ticket to attack and fleece thousands of sitting ducks.
An eternity later I was jammed outside a locked gate, rubbing eyes that had picked up the pepper spray, seeing petrified kids crying, pensioners gagging, desperate people begging for information, locals scaling the fences and Liverpool fans dragging down those of their own who tried to follow suit. Ironically, those being blamed for causing the mayhem were the ones whose patience and appeals for calm were preventing a major disaster.
Meanwhile, behind metal grilles, staring back at us, were Robocops with batons and sprays at the ready, awaiting a reaction. Despite holding a €150 ticket and turning up two hours before kick-off I’d resigned myself to missing the game because experience taught me that it goes with the territory. There have been so many occasions in Europe over the years when police and authorities have simply got away with treating fans of English clubs like scum.
In April we were corralled for no reason outside Benfica’s Estádio da Luz as security carried out single file body searches, meaning thousands of us missed the kick-off. UEFA looked away, picked up the TV money, and moved on. The French on Saturday, with their trigger-happy heavy-handedness and blind-eye turning to the real criminals, took contempt to a new level. But fans of Chelsea, Manchester United, Everton and England who were tear-gassed in France in recent years would not have been surprised at the treatment.
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The police had been riding around through the city all day in one huge motorbike cavalcade to let us know we were up for a battle, but gained little response from passing fans who just wanted to see the sights and have a drink at roadside cafes. Later in the stadium riot police would line up confrontationally in front of Liverpool fans to let the world know they were anticipating a violent attack that never came. The fans just wanted to go home, preferably without being mugged outside by locals. Many of them were. As police looked on.
After the tear gas had cleared there was an even more rancid stench: The buck-passing bulls*** from French authorities who claimed there were 40,000 fake tickets, an impossible number that has been laughed out of court even by the French media. Yet after such a monumental mishandling of a major sporting event I understand why cowardly French politicians played the English hooligan card. It is the response from UEFA though, that is far more disgraceful and worrying. Without establishing any facts or checking the dire situation outside a ground they had chosen to stage the biggest game in their club calendar, they immediately blamed the delayed kick-off on late-arriving Liverpool fans.
Then switched the narrative to ticketless hordes when video evidence blew their lies out of the water. The only slur missing from the Hillsborough playbook was to claim most of the fans were drunk. The French media, its people, police officials and Real Madrid fans have since poured scorn on the official version of events. Parisian deputy mayor, Richard Bouigue, wrote to Joe Blott, the chair of the Liverpool supporters' group, Spirit of Shankly, shooting down the false allegations and expressing his "deep regret" at the way fans were treated.
Yet there has been nothing from UEFA except the pledge of an independent inquiry. But how can anybody trust the same self-serving, power-preserving body who organised this shambles to properly investigate itself? More than 5,000 Liverpool fans have written to the club detailing their experiences. Many more of us who were present struggled to write, or read, about the events, especially when a familiar cover-up pattern emerged. For some of us who were at Hillsborough this was extremely triggering. Did UEFA, which is supposed to have knowledge of the game it runs, even consider that consequence when it turned into a South Yorkshire Police tribute act? Does it remotely care?
Two months ago they offered to give 10,000 free tickets to the Champions League finalists, a scheme rejected by clubs who asked them instead to reduce some of their outrageous prices. President Aleksander Ceferin said: “Football fans are the lifeblood of the game and we thought it would be a nice way to recognise the difficulties they have experienced over the last two years. We must ensure that loyal travelling supporters can attend historic moments for their cherished teams at affordable prices.” Sure. Check out their ticket distribution which prioritises their powerful friends and sponsors, their ballot which is effectively a touts’ charter and the obscene prices they ask fans to pay, and you’ll realise that’s just sanctimonious garbage.
As for the difficulties fans experience? On Saturday when thousands were crying out for help, UEFA’s delegates sipped champagne in the corporate lounges with the money-brokers and deflected all blame onto them. Their customers. I’d like to say I’m waiting for an apology from UEFA, but I don’t care any more. Because I genuinely believe they don’t want fans at their showpiece events. If they could create a CGI crowd they would, because the people they laughingly describe as their lifeblood are an irrelevant pain in their money-making backside. It has been said many times that UEFA is unfit for purpose. But their handling of Saturday in Paris hints at something more disturbing: That they actually loathe football fans. Why else would they allow their customers to be abused like animals in an illegal circus then side with their abusers?
