The fallout from the chaos at the UEFA Champions League final in Paris last month will continue in France this week, where the inquiry into what happened and who is responsible has been picking up pace.
Last Thursday the French senate heard testimony from more key figures about the fiasco at European football’s showpiece event, in which Liverpool fans who arrived early with valid match tickets were tear gassed, hit with batons and forced into dangerous crushes by French police.
Chief of police Didier Lallement told the senators present about the authorities’ strategy and tactics for managing the event, a representative of the French Football Federation discussed ticketing policy, and Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham gave a first-hand account of his experience at the final, after which he was mugged by a local youth.
After minister of the interior Gérald Darmanin and sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s respective testimonies the previous week, when both were heavily criticised for making baseless, erroneous and downright offensive claims about industrial scale ticket forgeries and for blaming Liverpool supporters themselves for supposedly causing violence, Lallement’s senate session in particular caused anger again.
The 66-year-old has been chief of Parisian police since 2019, and in that time has faced repeated calls to resign in the wake of national controversies about brutal incidents involving police officers causing serious injuries to regular citizens. At the senate on Thursday, he sought to take the heat off both under-fire ministers by taking responsibility for some wildly inaccurate figures, but doubled down on blaming Liverpool supporters.
Lallement admitted that he had created the highly-criticised figure of 40,000 supposedly ticketless Liverpool fans who Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra had tried to insists had attempted to enter the Stade de France. After neither minister provided any evidence whatsoever for their claim, and faced pushback from fans whose audiovisual files proved them wrong, Lallement admitted he had supplied the figure based on mere hearsay and guesswork and that it had ‘no scientific value.’
Subsequently, Lallement declared he had given the order for tear gas to be used on fans including women and children who had tried to peacefully queue for entry to a football match they had paid to attend, saying his choice was between using tear gassing or instructing his offers to ‘charge’ into fans wielding weaponry. He added that he knew of ‘no other method’ of managing a crowd of football fans
In that moment, Lallement proved that he and his forces had acted entirely on outdated prejudices about English football hooligans. The French police had decided months ago, after Paris agreed to host the final, that any English fans were dangerous and would have to be controlled like animals.
When no such hooligans arrived, because neither Liverpool nor any of the big English clubs has had any in decades, Lallement and his forces continued to use violent tactics against families and regular football fans instead.
At no point in any of their testimonies did any of Lallement, Darmanin or Oudéa-Castéra provide any sort of photographic or video evidence backing up their version of events. They were unable to do so because that evidence does not exist, and the version of events is simply untrue. Couple that with the fact that vital CCTV evidence from the stadium and public transport services has officially been ‘automatically’ deleted after the French judiciary failed to request it in time, and fans are understandably suspicious that attempts are being made to alter history and silence their voices.
It is, of course, up to the French senate to decide how it proceeds with its inquiry, and the inclusion of Rotherham means a welcome voice from this side of the channel has at least been able to have a say. But the fact that the official enquiry has not yet heard testimony from directly fans means it cannot possible have a full picture of what occurred, how it happened, and what the consequences have been for the people who suffered.
On Friday last week the French interministerial committee for large sporting events (separate from the senate) released a 30-page report into the Champions League final, in which it made no mention whatsoever of any poor behaviour from Liverpool fans and instead offered a series of suggestions for improving how France can manage sporting events with large creates.
The report, though, did not go far enough to admonish fans of all blame or to clearly state that the authorities’ excuses about supporters who arrived too late, too drunk, or tried to force entry are categorically untrue.
The senate’s investigation will last longer and should ultimately be more thorough. But for it to really be accurate, the French authorities should invite a small number of supporters who were present to detail their experiences.
Those in power have already had their chance to give their accounts, which were very quickly proven demonstrably false. Now, fans should be given the opportunity to speak the truth.
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