Photo: THOMAS COEX / Getty Images
UEFA has commissioned an independent report on Saturday’s incidents outside the Stade de France in Paris that delayed the start of the to final of the Champions League between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
The game started more than half an hour late and crowds of Liverpool fans were observed, who were sprayed with tear gas by the police
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The French authorities denounced on Monday an alleged fraud “on an industrial scale” with the tickets for the final, in the midst of controversy over security management 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 purge responsibilities.
But, what was the 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
The images taken just before the start of the match show Liverpool fans – who had tickets – forming huge queues, and the French police using tear gas against the crowd.
The treatment of the fans was “an absolute disgrace”, a 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 indiscriminately sprayed with pepper spray and there were people with tickets who had arrived Two and a half hours before, they queued up, and received the riot charges with shields”, he assured.
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, claimed that 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 picking each other up and jumping over the fences because they were being crushed“.
Nick Parrott, a BBC sports journalist who was in Paris, described the events of Saturday as “the most petrifying thing I’ve ever had at a football game.”
He tweeted that local people no ticket “they tried to force their way in so that the security would close the doors and prevent the entry of fans who did have tickets.”
Robberies and violence
Supporters of both Liverpool and Real Madrid denounced that many of the problems were caused by youth gangs from the Saint-Denis neighborhood , where the stadium is located and which is known to be a focus of marginality and crime in the French capital.
The fans complained that, in addition to storming the gates to try to enter the stadium without a ticket , hordes of local youth the fans were robbed or robbed.
“ They came to take everything away from us, to steal from us, but it was the gendarmes who threw pepper spray and rubber bullets at us,” a Madrid fan told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
This and other fans explained how at the entrance and exit of the stadium the groups of young people pounced on the followers of both teams, in many cases families with children, to steal their wallet or mobile phone , without the agents of the deployed gendarmerie could prevent it.
These events are confirmed Numerous videos circulating on the internet and showing the assailants in action.
Some criminals also tried to take pictures to the mobile phones of the fans to steal their digital tickets, which in the resale ta immediately before the match were quoted at more than 1,000 euros, 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 had been forced or had the windows broken and their belongings inside had been stolen.
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