France has apologised for the chaos that marred the Champions League final on Saturday night in Paris and admitted that the way British football fans were handled went badly wrong.
However, ministers also blamed the distribution of fake tickets “on an industrial scale” for the match between Liverpool and Real Madrid for the crowd control issues that resulted in women and children being tear gassed by police outside the gates of the Stade de France.
At a press conference after an emergency meeting of sporting and law enforcement officials on Monday, interior minister Gérald Darmanin and sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra both said they regretted what happened to Liverpool fans amassed outside the gates.
“We have nothing to be proud of about what happened on Saturday night,” said Darmanin. “Sports should be a celebration and this one was in part ruined” by the delay to the match start and violent incidents, he added. “This is not what should happen, obviously. I do want to add though that the decisions that were made helped avoid deaths.”
The recriminations after the final, in which Real Madrid beat Liverpool in front of 80,000 fans, have intensified since Saturday and risked turning into a diplomatic row after Downing Street said footage from outside the stadium was “deeply upsetting and concerning”.
On Monday, a meeting to analyse what went wrong was attended by representatives from Uefa, European football’s governing body, the French football federation, the police, the interior ministry and the district of Seine-Saint-Denis, where the stadium is located.
The French ministers also sought to deflect blame by saying that the root of the problem stemmed from as many as 40,000 fans who showed up without tickets or with fake tickets, leading an initial set of check points to be overwhelmed and crowds to build up dangerously at the gates.
Darmanin said this “massive fraud on an industrial scale” came about because nearly all of the Liverpool fans were using paper tickets and not digital ones, in contrast with the 22,000 Real Madrid fans, three-quarters of whom were issued digital tickets. French prosecutors are now investigating the alleged ticket fraud, and have also asked Uefa to look into the matter.
More than two-thirds of the tickets presented by about 60,000 Liverpool supporters were fakes, Darmanin added.
Problems were also aggravated by a strike that affected one of the train lines that serves the stadium, which forced fans on to other modes of transport that concentrated the crowds on a small number of roads and entrances to the stadium. Nor was there sufficient signage or enough stewards to help funnel the British supporters to the right places.
As of the scheduled kick off time of 9pm, 97 per cent of Real Madrid supporters were in the stadium versus half of the Liverpool fans, the officials said.
Nadine Dorries, the UK culture secretary, on Sunday urged Uefa “to launch a formal investigation into what went wrong and why, in co-ordination with stadium staff, the French Police, Fédération Française de Football, Merseyside Police and Liverpool Football Club”.
Others cast doubt on the French version of events. Ronan Evian, who heads a fans group called Football Supporters Europe, said the 40,000 figure was “a fantasy” that the French authorities were using to blame Liverpool supporters for the behaviour of the 7,000 or so police on duty that night.
Ian Byrne, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby, who was at the match, said he had not seen anything like the scenes since the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. He wrote to Liz Truss, foreign secretary, calling for a formal probe into the behaviour of the French authorities and Uefa.
“I can honestly say that the situation outside the ground was one of the most horrendous experiences of my life — and as a Hillsborough survivor, I do not make this comment lightly,” he said in the letter.
“I have honestly never witnessed such a hostile environment for a football match. It was truly horrific. Many elderly people, children, disabled people, asthma sufferers and families out for a day to remember were among those pepper sprayed.”
Some fans also reported being mugged by locals on the way out of the stadium and blamed police for not securing the zone around the Stade de France. Police officials declined to comment on the reports on Sunday.
The incidents are politically sensitive, not only for the negative image they projected of France at a high-profile event, but also because the country is preparing to host the Rugby World Cup next year and the summer Olympics in 2024.
Uefa and Liverpool did not respond to requests for comment.