Investigations into what unfolded outside the Stade de France prior to the Champions League final on May 28 continue, with Liverpool fans to front the French senate on Tuesday afternoon.
They will provide first-hand accounts of the dangerous and harrowing events that saw fans kettled, sprayed with tear gas, robbed and fronted by riot police while simply waiting to watch a football match.
There has been one shocking revelation after another in the aftermath of the final, from an outrageous claim of 30-40,000 fake and ticketless fans to CCTV footage being conveniently deleted from outside the stadium and train stations.
Further to that, a report suggested that riot police were turned to due to perceived links between Liverpool supporters and hooliganism in reference to the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989.
It all leaves little faith in UEFA’s independent investigation, especially when Martin Kallen, CEO of UEFA Events, continue to highlight their incompetence in front of the French senate.
UEFA representatives were in Paris on Tuesday morning and journalist Dan Austin, who has closely followed the events following the final, provided updates from the hearing.
“Risk evaluation before the match told us that there was a high risk of a pitch invasion and a high risk of a lot of fake tickets,” Kallen said. “We were warned a lot of people without tickets would try to enter the stadium.
“From 18:52 there were serious security issues because of fans with fake tickets or without any ticket.
“The goal of closing the turnstiles was to avoid allowing fans without tickets in and the capacity of the stadium being oversubscribed. The closure reduced massively the crushed of people.”
Kallen then even went on to unbelievably say, “In the past two finals with Liverpool there were fans who wanted to get into the stadium with fake or no tickets. We knew that in advance. We had two or three meetings with Liverpool about it.”
But despite Kallen peddling one nonsense sentence after another regarding tickets, he ultimately conceded that UEFA’s digital ticket system can easily fall to pieces simply with Bluetooth and a “faulty pen” used to verify tickets.
It was a hearing that saw little attention focused on the organisational incompetence and the real issues at hand that saw the chaos in Paris come to be, instead Liverpool fans were continued to be blamed.
