Anderson: Police “really brutal”
On the other hand, Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson, who was herself at the Stade de France, complained on the BBC that the police had acted “really brutally”. In addition, the organization of the football game was “chaotic”. Liverpool supporters should be given an apology. “Our fans have been stereotyped in terms of their behavior. I get angrier and angrier the more stories I hear,” Anderson said. “Fans need to be treated with more respect.”
Earlier, the mayor (Labour party) had announced that she would ask British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss for answers from UEFA and French President Emmanuel Macron to investigate the incidents. “It’s a shame to blame the fans,” Anderson tweeted.
France’s Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, on the other hand, said that 30,000 to 40,000 people had rushed to the Stade de France without a ticket or with counterfeit tickets and had caused massive security problems there. It still needs to be clarified where such a large number of counterfeit tickets came from, the minister told broadcaster RTL in Paris on Monday. She also accused Liverpool of not taking good care of their fans and leaving them to themselves, unlike Real.
The minister regretted the use of tear gas, which also affected uninvolved fans, families and children. All lessons should be learned from Saturday night’s events, also with a view to the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Olympic Games in France.
The police in Paris registered more than 100 arrests and 230 injuries around the final. UEFA explained the chaos at the entrance to the large number of fans without valid tickets. The turnstiles at the entrance for Liverpool fans were blocked because thousands of supporters with fake tickets could not go through them. The police used tear gas. The kick-off time was pushed back by more than half an hour. Fan representatives criticize a one-sided representation by UEFA.
“The fans here are the victims of organizational failure and are certainly not the culprits,” said Ronan Evain from the Football Supporters Europe (FSE) fan alliance on the ARD “Sportschau”. “They bear no responsibility for the fiasco.”