Liverpool fans and various pundits have taken to social media to vent their rage after two French ministers have blamed the dangerous scenes, which delayed Saturday's Champions League final, on Liverpool fans arriving with fake tickets.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin claimed that thousands of fake tickets were used to get into the ground, and called it "massive fraud to an industrial level."
He also praised the police for their actions saying that "I'd like to thank the forces of law and order. They were very calm and able to avoid drama."
French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera also gave her say and stated that, "what happened, first of all, was this mass gathering of the British supporters of the Liverpool club, without tickets, or with fake tickets."
Naturally many fans were outraged by these claims as video evidence strongly suggests that it was poor organisations from Champions League officials and French police which caused a lot of the delays and disruption.
Jamie Carragher took to Twitter to brand the ministers as 'liars'.
Liars @AOC1978 @UEFA police & authorities can’t get away with cover ups as easily as they used to thankfully. https://t.co/0fq7NSzOGV
— Jamie Carragher (@Carra23) May 30, 2022
Sky Sports reporter Melissa Reddy also took to Twitter to vent against Darmanin saying that, "This is so painfully false, far-fetched and easy to debunk with reason and rationale, let alone the heaps of evidence collected by international media, testimony of local police and fans of both teams. A massive organisational, safety and security failure at an industrial level."
Kaveh Solhekol, Sky Sport's chief reporter, also spoke at length to describe his version of what happened on Saturday evening.
"[The French explanation] does not tally at all with what I saw. Let's be clear what's happened in Paris this morning. We've had a meeting between the French sports minister, the French interior minister, UEFA and the Paris police chief Didier Lallement. Now I'm sure at this meeting this morning, the police chief had been asked what happened on Saturday. This is embarrassing for France. It was a shambles. Look at all the terrible headlines around the world. They are hosting the Rugby World Cup next year. They are hosting the Olympics in 2024. I'm sure he was asked to explain what went wrong, and I think he has passed the blame for what happened on Liverpool supporters and now fake tickets.
"I'm sure there were some fake tickets. There are always fake tickets for big finals, but I did not see anything that looked like an industrial massive fraud operation. For instance, I didn't have Liverpool supporters coming up to me and telling me complaining or being upset that they bought fake tickets. They were coming up to me complaining about the fact that they were being tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed and crushed. They were being treated like animals by the French police.
"What I saw was a shambles, total disorganisation and the blame was totally with UEFA, the French authorities, the stadium authorities and the French police. We were in a situation where 20,000 Liverpool supporters turned up at that stadium early up to five hours before kick-off and they were asked to wait in a confined space and there was a gap which was only big enough for one person that 20,000 people had to be filtered through."
🗣 "I think the police chief has passed the blame on for what happened to Liverpool supporters and fake tickets."@SkyKaveh's reaction to the French Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin's statement about what happened outside the Stade de France pic.twitter.com/FbP5er3Tea
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) May 30, 2022
The French minister of the interior Gerald Darmanin is a liar. The French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra is a liar. The French government as a whole is lying at every turn.
Blaming a faceless mass of foreign people to protect themselves. Keep telling the truth.— Daniel Austin (@_Dan_Austin) May 30, 2022
Liverpool MP Ian Byrne compared the reaction from the French ministers to the lies told after the Hillsborough tragedy of 1989.
"We're back in 1989 territory where the lies and smears about Hillsborough went out really quickly and that narrative was set.
"When I got into the grounds I was absolutely appalled when I saw the signs saying it was due to the late arrival of fans.
"There were people who had been there three-and-a-half hours who were kettled in, getting pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed - this was a football occasion."
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