AFP and New York Times: Fewer than 3,000 counterfeit cards
The French news agency AFP reported on Tuesday evening (May 31, 2022), citing participants in a crisis meeting between UEFA and the French Football Association, that the number of tickets scanned during the talks was estimated at 2,800.
On Wednesday, the New York Times narrowed the number down, reporting 2,589 tickets refused by security at the gates.
Were the fakes really all fakes?
And even these numbers may still be too high. A friend of Andy Robertson’s was one of the people rejected with allegedly forged cards.
Like all Liverpool players, the full-back received tickets and made one available to his friend. “Someone told him he had a fake”said Roberston on Sky. “I can assure you these were not fake tickets, I got them from Liverpool FC.” One reason for such cases could be faulty scanning devices, the Associated Press agency reported.
The “industrial scale” that the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Sport spoke of for the fakes can hardly be proven. Fake cards are not a new phenomenon in big games. The number of less than 3,000 is a little above the usual range – but the organization of a Champions League final can hardly fail because of this.
French Senate considers final
On Wednesday, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Sport had to face a questioning in the French Senate. There he at least acknowledged the “disproportionate use” of pepper spray and announced proceedings against two officials. “It’s obvious that things could have been better organized,” he said. Darmanin maintained that the fakes were the cause of the problems.
French President Macron is now part of the discussion about a football game. Macron and his government are sad that fans could not see the game as planned, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday after outraged statements from British politics. How does the president feel about his interior minister? “Gérald Darmanin is an interior minister who has the full confidence of the President,” said the spokeswoman.
“How can 37,200 football fans vanish into thin air?”
A crucial question remains how many people were at and in the stadium. Interior Minister Darmanin spoke of 120,000, the French association of 110,000. These figures are questioned as too high. The American broadcaster CBS reported 95,000 people, citing the police.
The newspaper Libération showed the minister with a Pinocchio nose and commented on the difference between the detected fakes compared to the 40,000 said: “How can 37,200 football fans vanish over 800 meters? It’s time for the interior minister to make his imaginative statements gives up.”
Fan representative criticizes Minister of the Interior
Ronan Evain, managing director of the fan alliance Football Supporters Europe, clearly criticized the appearance of the interior minister. “Darmanin tried to mix clear facts with incomprehensible facts in order to be less vulnerable,” Evain said in an interview with the sports show. And there are new contradictions.
As for the whereabouts of the 37,200 fans, the Minister of the Interior said that after kick-off they took the train to Paris. “But the railways speak of regular operation at this time. Such a mass of people would have been noticed on surveillance cameras.” The interior minister said there were video images but “unfortunately he was not allowed to show them”.
Evain’s review: “The scale of the influx of ticketless fans has been exaggerated to distract from the scale of the organizational failure.”
Lots of questions for the police, politicians and UEFA
The French police, authorities, UEFA and the French Football Federation will now have to answer questions:
- Why did the police force numerous Liverpool fans into a dangerous corner in an underpass near the stadium?
- How do the police justify the seemingly indiscriminate use of pepper spray against fans on many videos, some of which also hit children?
- Why couldn’t the safety of many fans of both teams be guaranteed when several of them were robbed, especially after the game?
- Why did UEFA justify the match’s postponement as Liverpool fans ‘arriving late’, even though many of them had been waiting in vain for hours?
- How could it happen that fans with valid tickets were turned away?
- At the same time, why was it possible for several young people who could not be assigned to any fan group to climb over the fences and break into the stadium?
- Why have Liverpool fans been stigmatized as violent for days with no evidence of such behaviour?
Local politician from Paris: “The time for an apology must come”
At least one found balancing words. Richard Bouigue is the deputy mayor of the 12th arrondissement of Paris, where the fan zone for Liverpool fans was organized. “I bitterly regret that Liverpool fans are being held solely responsible for the failed organization of the game,” he wrote on Twitter. “We have to overcome the useless polemics, find out the facts and compare them with the problem-free process in the fan zone. (…) The time for officially denying responsibility is over, the time for an apology must come.”
Bouigue spoke of concerns from residents and business people ahead of the game. However, these were all dissipated by the happy mood of the Liverpool fans.