Commotion at Champions League final ‘inevitable fiasco,’ French Senate report says

By Shweta Desai

PARIS (AA) – A French Senate committee’s report on Wednesday criticized the government’s organizational failures for the events of crowd mismanagement and crime during the UEFA Champions League final at the Stade de France which it said were an “inevitable fiasco.”

The report flagged a series of malfunctions in the execution of the Real Madrid vs Liverpool final on May 28. It slammed the authorities for failing to take into account the disruption caused by large crowds at football matches. In particular, it named Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and Paris police chief Didier Lallement for shifting the responsibility from authorities to the supporters of the Liverpool club for the chaos.

“The political will to make the presence of British supporters appear as the sole cause of the situation of chaos experienced by the Stade de France, with perhaps the desire to hide the poor organizational choices made, is not in any event acceptable,” the report quoted by Public Senat news said.

Darmanin and Lallement initially cited an excess crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool supporters who came to the stadium with fake tickets or without tickets for the mismanagement. The two apologized after facing public backlash for their statements.

The senatorial report listed recommendations including mandatory use of tamper-proof tickets for high-profile football competitions, systematic crowd management planning, and a doctrine for the use of tear gas by security force agents among others to prevent a repeat of such incidents in future sporting events.

This is the second such official report to fix the responsibility on the authorities and absolve the spectators. An inter-ministerial report, submitted to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on June 10, highlighted a series of “systematic malfunctions of the controls” resulting in disruptions during the final match.

France was heavily criticized for a gross dysfunction and crowd commotion that resulted in over half an hour delay in the kickoff of the final match. Official ticket holders were stuck in queues for hours as the police fired teargas in close proximity to the crowd that included small children as hundreds of supporters broke the security cordon and jumped the metal gates to enter the stadium. The visuals of the disorganizations raised embarrassing questions over France’s ability to host the 2024 Olympics in Paris.