Delayed match, violence, intrusions, tear gas … The evening on Saturday turned to fiasco on the sidelines of the Champions League final. A failure that the French authorities attribute, against all evidence, to the only British supporters
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Fifteen months from the organization of the Rugby World Cup, twenty-two from the outfit of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, the reception of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, On Saturday, at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis, had the test of the test match for the French authorities. The event turned into a crash test with the broadcast, throughout the weekend, of filmed sequences of general panic near the sports enclosure, supporters spachers of tear gas, intrusions of spectators without Ticket, charges of the police and, finally, at a delayed kick-off of thirty-six minutes. All in the world, followed by some 400 million viewers on the planet.
A disaster in terms of image and a “humiliation for our country”, according to the senator of Isère Michel Savin (Les Républicains), president of the group of studies major sporting events in the Senate, who claimed creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into incidents, such as several elected officials from the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council.
If no serious injuries are to be deplored, 238 people had to be taken care of by the emergency services, 105 others were arrested – two thirds in Saint -Denis – and 73 of them placed in custody on sight. “Shame”, “nameless scandal”: the European media, in particular British and Spanish, have had no words hard enough to castigate the course of the evening.
united in this bankruptcy, public authorities and organizers of the meeting were also in their communication – or their silence, in the case of the Stade de France consortium, which manages the interior of the sports grounds. Despite overwhelming videos and heartbreaking photos and against evidence, British supporters were pointed out like the only responsible for fiasco. “Thousands of British” supporters “, without tickets or with false tickets, forced the entries and, sometimes, violated the stadiers”, advanced, Saturday evening, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on Twitter, imitated by His new colleague of sports, Amélie Oudé-Castera, who castigated “attempts at intrusion and fraud” of fans of the Reds.
Monday morning, at the microphone of RTL, the minister estimated the number of people without a ticket or holders of false tickets to “30,000 to 40,000, or almost 50 % of the capacity of the Stade de France”. UEFA, organizer of the event and head of security outside the Stade de France, has limited itself to the dissemination of a laconic press release from seven lines taking up the same language elements with, notable difference, a compassionate supplement for spectators “affected by events”.
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