Six days following the release of the independent investigation report into the fiasco of the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France, which pointed to the responsibilities of UEFA and the French authorities, the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra has responded this Sunday. “We have learned all the lessons and we will deliver major international sporting events,” she promised in Courchevel (Savoie).
“We have shown that we are at work to learn absolutely all the lessons from all of this, on the management of flows, on the deployment of security forces, the mobilization of private security agencies, crime prevention plans” , said Amélie Oudéa-Castéra in the mixed zone of the Alpine Skiing World Championships, which ended this Sunday with the men’s slalom.
Reds supporters wrongly singled out
“We are working with Gérald Darmanin on all these issues, both for the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and we will deliver major international sporting events,” insisted the minister. Regarding the last C1 final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, the independent report returned to the endless wait suffered by supporters and families, often sprayed with tear gas or victims of theft. The device for maintaining order during this Champions League final had given rise, on May 28, 2022, to scenes of chaos in Saint-Denis, causing a lively controversy in France and England.
Experts in the report, led by Portugal’s former education, youth and sports minister, Tiago Brandao Rodrigues, said they were “flabbergasted” that the match’s policing pattern may have been influenced by the image of Liverpool supporters, assimilated to hooligans. They denounced in the report an “inexplicable misconception”. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had initially incriminated the British supporters with the many falsified tickets according to him, before the prefect of police of Paris at the time Didier Lallement admitted to having “perhaps been mistaken” on their number , acknowledging a “failure”.
