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image source, REUTERS
UEFA has commissioned an independent report into Saturday’s incidents outside the Stade de France in Paris that delayed the start of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
The match started more than half an hour late and crowds of Liverpool fans were observed, whom the police sprayed with tear gas.
The French authorities denounced on Monday an alleged fraud “on an industrial scale” with the tickets for the final, in full controversy over the management of security at the event.
UEFA, which initially attributed the incidents to the “late arrival” of some spectators, announced an “exhaustive review” that will lead to an “independent” report to determine what happened and determine who is responsible.
But what happened in the vicinity of the Stade de France on Saturday afternoon? The BBC and other media have collected testimonies from fans who were there and suffered, to a greater or lesser degree, the altercations.
Complaints of police excesses
Footage taken just before kick-off shows Liverpool fans – who had tickets – forming huge queues, and French police using tear gas on the crowd.
image source, Archyde.com
French policeman uses tear gas to ward off Liverpool fans
The treatment of fans was “an absolute disgrace,” Liverpool fan Tom Whitehurst told the BBC.
The fan explained that had to remove his disabled son from the place after the gendarmes sprayed them with pepper spray.
Fans “were sprayed indiscriminately with pepper spray and there were people with tickets who had arrived two and a half hours before, who were queuing, and received charges from riot police with shields,” he said.
The London government has called for an investigation into the treatment of Liverpool fans.
crowds
One of the train lines that served the stadium, RER B, was not working, so traffic was concentrated on the other, RER D, with a single control for all fans arriving at the perimeter of the stadium.
Another Liverpool supporter, Michael Carter, said the problem started when fans leaving the station headed down a “narrow alley”.
Later, at the gates of the stadium, some attendees further back in line “were lifting each other up and jumping the fences because they were getting crushed“.
Nick Parrott, a BBC sportswriter who was in Paris, described Saturday’s events as “the most petrifying experience I’ve ever had at a football match”.
He tweeted that local people without entry “They were trying to force their way through so that security would close the doors and prevent fans who did have tickets from entering.”
Supporters of both Liverpool and Real Madrid denounced that many of the problems were caused by youth gangs from the Saint-Denis neighborhoodwhere the stadium is located and which is known for being a focus of marginality and crime in the French capital.
Fans complained that in addition to storming the gates to try to get into the stadium without a ticket, hordes of local youth fans were robbed or robbed.
“They came to take everything from us, to rob us, but it was the gendarmes who threw pepper spray and rubber bullets at us,” a Madrid fan told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
image source, REUTERS
This and other fans explained how at the entrance and exit of the stadium, groups of young people pounced on the supporters of both teams, in many cases families with children, to steal their wallet or mobilewithout the deployed gendarmerie agents being able to prevent it.
confirm these events numerous videos circulating on the internet and showing the raiders in action.
Some criminals also tried to take pictures of fans’ mobile phones to steal their digital tickets, which were priced at more than 1,000 euros on resale immediately before the game, according to El Mundo.
Other attendees who parked in the authorized parking lots or in the streets near the stadium reported that, after returning to their vehicles, these they had been forced or had broken windows and his belongings inside had been stolen.
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