French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has apologized to “Everyone who suffered from bad management” at the Champions League final in Paris.
Darmanin’s remarks, according to Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne, who attended the championship game, were a “hugely critical moment in our collective quest for the truth to be told,” and they made a stronger case for “a full and transparent investigation.”
Darmanin, who has made hotly contested assertions regarding the number of fake tickets sold at the Stade de France, refrained from apologizing to the Liverpool supporters he accused of being responsible for the issues on the night of the team lost to Real Madrid.
Following the 1-0 loss to Real Madrid, thousands of Liverpool supporters were barred out of the stadium, and police subsequently used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Initially, the French authorities accused Liverpool fans for the disorder outside the stadium.
Amelie Oudea-Castera, France’s minister of sport, and Gerald Darmanin, minister of the interior, both claimed that the disruption was being caused by supporters trying to enter without tickets or with fake tickets.
However, there have been multiple eyewitness reports of significant traffic concerns at the entrance to the stadium and patient supporters being shut out for nearly an hour due to complications with scanning tickets.
After the game, fans said that local gangs had looted them, and they accused the police—who had earlier used harsh tactics to try to control the crowd—of providing no security.
The two recent France Nations League games and the Top 14 rugby final at the stadium, according to Darmanin, both went off without a hitch. He claimed they have now taken what they learned from that experience.
Darmanin has since recanted after testifying before the senate that 40,000 fans attempted to enter the stadium without tickets or with false tickets in a “major fraud on an industrial scale,” while some fans arrived late, some were inebriated, and some arrived late.
Though Ted Morris of the Liverpool Disabled Supporters and Joe Blott of Spirit of Shankly submitted proof last week, Darmanin would not retract his assertions, and he was obliged to acknowledge “poor management” of the spectacle.
Martin Kallen, a Uefa official, denied Darmanin’s accusations that 30,000 to 40,000 supporters arrived at the Stade de France without tickets or with fraudulent tickets, despite Darmanin’s apology for “the disproportionate deployment of teargas” before a French Senate committee hearing this month.
Uefa’s head of events brought two thousand six hundred fake tickets to the turnstiles. The turnstiles didn’t receive a lot of tickets, he continued. How many? We are unable to properly confirm, thus we don’t know. The estimate in France was between 30,000 and 40,000, but we don’t think that’s the case here.
