The Stade de France witnessed tens of thousands of fans through Paris on May 28 to watch a head-to-head final match between Liverpool and Real Madrid, but the hugely anticipated showdown was drowned in chaotic moments.
The Paris Police Chief Didier Lallement made a shocking revelation on Thursday evening. He admitted a massive security failure during the Champions League Final match between Real Madrid and Liverpool FC on Sunday. Real Madrid gave a disastrous blow to Liverpool fans for a record-extending 14th time after beating Liverpool 1-0 in the final.
As per Bloomberg, “The head of policing at last month’s Champions League match in Paris conceded the operation was a “failure” and appeared to back-track on blaming unruly fans for the incident.”
Paris Police Chief Lallement said he takes “full responsibility for police management” of the event and clearly admitted that it was a security ‘Failure’ from their end.
The Stade de France police authorities found a major failure in the security while dealing with a massive football audience. The stadium CCTV footage captures extremely violent scenes outside the Champions League final in Paris that were automatically deleted after the event as there were no requests from the French justice system to seize the videotape, a French football official affirmed on Thursday.
Head of institutional relations for the French Football Federation (FFF), Erwan Le Prévost told the French senate that these images were deleted because they self-delete automatically after seven days as per the law. If the French public prosecutor fails to seize them as part of an investigation, they disappear from the system, Le Prévost said. He also told the senate that he was a part of the security center of the stadium and described the moments as “extremely violent”.
The Final Match was delayed by more than 35 minutes due to the unprecedented odd circumstances after tear gas was used by French police on Liverpool supporters held in tightly packed areas.
While France’s sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera and Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin have put blame on ticketless fans or supporters who were trying to get in; the French senate grieved over this issue and expressed his “sincere apologies” to Spanish and English fans who were not welcomed in “safe conditions” in the match. He added, “the image of the country has been shaken”.
The Unforeseen Dark Champions League Event
Pre-match developments of chaotic events were already inviting deflection from a smooth match. There were numerous eyewitness accounts of major congestion problems while approaching the stadium and patient fans being locked out for almost an hour as the issues with scanning tickets intensified.
The local gangs then assaulted and robbed the supporters after the match before making their way back to coaches and trains. But the evidence is already destroyed due to an apparent failure by officials and now, it has nothing there to prove against the security failure remark of the Paris Police Chief.
Liverpool Metropolitan Mayor Steve Rotheram expressed concerns about the event and said the missing footage event is similar to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, at which 97 fans died. He further asked “the deleted CCTV footage? It’s really worrying. I can’t understand why (it was deleted) when we want to know what happened. It shows very clearly there’s a real problem. I’m shocked to be honest,” via video conferencing.
The city mayor thrashed the authorities for the events that led to the disturbance in Stade de France during the Champions League final in Paris as police used tear gas and pepper spray on the team supporters queuing up to get into the stadium.
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