The Other Factors Behind Liverpool Fans’ Champions League Final Chaos

It was the start to Champions League Final that nobody wanted.

After two successive years of Covid-19-related restrictions to UEFA’s
EFA
showpiece event, the return to full capacity for the Liverpool vs Real Madrid game was supposed to be a celebration of the beautiful game.

Hundreds of millions of viewers from around the world tuned in for the match, at the State de France in Paris, the problem was, that they couldn’t watch the game because it was delayed for “security reasons.”

Instead of soccer fans enjoying the spectacle of seeing Mo Salah and Karim Benzema strutting their stuff on the highest stage, they were left trying to piece together what on earth was causing all the trouble.

Gradually, two vastly different narratives began to emerge.

According to a statement from the game’s organizers, UEFA: “In the lead-up to the game, the turnstiles at the Liverpool end became blocked by thousands of fans who had purchased fake tickets which did not work in the turnstiles.

“This created a build-up of fans trying to get in. As a result, the kick-off was delayed by 35 minutes to allow as many fans as possible with genuine tickets to gain access,

“As numbers outside the stadium continued to build up after kick-off, the police dispersed them with tear gas and forced them away from the stadium,” the governing body claimed.

This explanation was strongly challenged, however, by both journalists and supporters on the ground.

They claimed chaotic organization and heavy-handed police tactics, including the use of tear gas, were behind the problems.

Many stated that having arrived early, they found their route to the stadium blocked and, despite owning legitimate tickets were denied access-a suggestion supported by Red’s defender Andy Robertson who said he had a friend turned away with a ticket he’d sourced for him.

Issuing its own statement in the aftermath, Liverpool FC said it had officially demanded a formal investigation into what had happened.

“We are hugely disappointed at the stadium entry issues and breakdown of the security perimeter that Liverpool fans faced this evening at Stade de France,” the statement said, “this is the greatest match in European football and supporters should not have to experience the scenes we have witnessed tonight.”

Given the club’s fans suffered the worst tragedy in English soccer history at Hillsborough in 1989 as the result of catastrophic failures by organizers and terrible policing, you would imagine this will not be something Liverpool will drop.

As we wait to get a full picture of exactly what happened in Paris, it’s worth examining the context in which these events have occurred.

2021/22: A chaotic return of fans

Since all-seater stadia was introduced, scenes such as those witnessed outside the Stade de France have thankfully become a far rarer occurrence.

Incidents like the Hillsborough disaster or the Heysel tragedy in the 1980s. where large numbers of fans died because of crowd crushes, have become a thing of the past, with huge improvements in the organization and management of major soccer events.

However, in the past year, there have been two major finals all overshadowed by major issues involving supporters.

In July 2021, the final of the Euro 2020 competition between England and Italy was overshadowed by major disorder both in and outside of Wembley stadium.

Chaotic scenes occurred as fans without tickets forced entry to the stadium, with 2,000 successfully gaining entry to the match.

A report into the events found there was a “collective failure” in planning for the occasion and that a “vulnerable” stewarding operation was exposed, an issue compounded by the police deployment arriving “too late.”

UEFA’s statement about the Liverpool vs Real Madrid game alluded to similar issues to those seen at Wembley, although clearly, a lack of security or insufficient police presence was not behind the problems in Paris.

Between 50,000-60,000 Liverpool fans were understood to have traveled to Paris for the game, at least double the official allocation.

And, while there have been some reports of people trying to gain access illegitimately, clearly this was a very different scenario to the Euro 2020 final.

Merseyside Police, who had officers deployed in Paris was one of many significant voices who were definitive in their statement that “the vast majority of fans behaved in an exemplary manner, arriving at turnstiles early and queuing as directed.”

Videos circulated on social media have also shown fans, who were peacefully queuing, and being tear-gassed by police.

The ‘English reputation’

The descriptions Liverpool supporters gave about their treatment in Paris reminded me of a point Professor Geoff Pearson of the University of Manchester Law School made when I spoke to him last summer.

“The England fan reputation is probably the biggest explainer of why England fans, now and again, are involved in major disorder,” he told me, “the English fan reputation is very dangerous.

“If you’re an English supporter, when you travel abroad, with your club or your country, you are a target for whatever local firms are about.

“You don’t want to be drinking late at night before a football match in an Irish or an English pub, in many areas of continental Europe, because that pub will be attacked. It happens on a very, very regular basis.”

He added that this reputation affected the police tactics too. “English fans are seen as being inherently dangerous,” he explained.

“Therefore, poor policing operations will police them ‘show of force’ manner, which crowd psychology tells us is linked to escalations in disorder.”

But the ‘English reputation’ will have only added to the events which have been occurring in French soccer throughout the 2021/22 season.

Games abandoned, players attacked

The other significant contextual factor to consider the events in Paris alongside is the crowd trouble that has blighted French soccer throughout this season.

From pitch invasions to players being attacked, the return of fans to France’s soccer stadiums has been chaotic, to say the least.

In one particularly unsavory incident, Nice was docked points after a game versus Marseille where the opposition players were repeatedly pelted with bottles from the stands and, when one was thrown back by Dimitri Payet, all hell broke loose resulting in the game being abandoned.

The lengthy list of other incidents includes a 30-minute delay to the kick-off of the game between Lille and Lens due to fighting supporters and a bus carrying Bordeaux fans being ambushed in Montpellier with 16 people injured.

So bad has the situation got that France’s minister of sport Vincent Labrune described it as “a gangrene that could kill us.”

He was more diplomatic when describing the reasons behind the violence Labrune to the French paper L’Equipe.

“A football stadium is a reflection of the state of our society and our society after the health crisis is not doing well: it is anxious, worried, disunited, quarrelsome and – it has to be said – a little crazy,” he suggested.

The scenes in Paris at the Champions League Final suggest this theory could be extended to the authorities who, after two years of lockdowns, protests and disorder, seemed to be equally quick to doll out heavy-handed treatment to people they are supposed to be keeping safe.