A senior French politician has apologised to Liverpool fans over the chaotic scenes in Paris on the evening of the 2022 Champions League final.
The 1-0 defeat to Real Madrid paled into irrelevance amid the extreme distress that supporters experienced outside the Stade de France, having been trapped in dangerous bottlenecks, teargassed by heavy-handed police, and ambushed and mugged by local youths.
Gérald Darmanin – who was France’s interior minister at the time and now works as the country’s justice minister – initially laid the blame for the disgraceful scenes on ‘British fans’ for arriving late to the stadium.
A subsequent independent report absolved Liverpool supporters of any culpability, instead pointing the finger at UEFA and the French authorities for the chaos which unfolded.
Darmanin apologises over Champions League final farce
In an interview on the Legend show on YouTube (in quotes carried by AP and translated by BBC and The Athletic), Darmanin admitted that he had wrongly scapegoated Liverpool fans over the inadequacies of those parties who were actually guilty, and that the security arrangements were fundamentally flawed.
He said: “It was a failure because I hadn’t checked what was happening properly, which was my mistake, and because I gave in to preconceived ideas.
“The scapegoat was easy to find, and I apologise now to Liverpool supporters. They were quite right to be hurt. It was a mistake and a failure.
“During my first public outing, I said what I was told, which was ‘Well, the English are causing mayhem’. It wasn’t true in the literal sense of the word. What I did not appreciate that evening was that the real problem was not coming from English supporters, but from delinquents who were robbing fans.
“Our security arrangements were not designed for that eventuality. We had riot police and mobile gendarmes with big boots and shields – not great for running. What you need against that kind of delinquency is officers in running shoes.
“We got our arrangements wrong. We were expecting a war of hooligans, and what we got instead was muggers.”
Not good enough from Darmanin
Some form of contrition from Darmanin is better than nothing, but it’s much too little too late from a politician who was far too impetuous in wrongly laying the blame at Liverpool fans three years ago when their patience actually prevented a frightening situation from having potentially fatal consequences.
In fact, even his apology was somewhat botched. By saying that he’d expected ‘a war of hooligans’, he’s painting an unjustly malign picture of Reds supporters and their Real Madrid counterparts, and there was no excuse for that comment.
The same two clubs had met in another Champions League final four years previously without any trouble, and that was also the case in their numerous head-to-heads in the competition over the past decade.
Darmanin’s long-overdue apology isn’t likely to cut any ice with fans who were innocently caught up in the chaos for which UEFA and the French authorities were responsible, and why it’s taken him nearly three years to try and atone for his mistakes beggars belief.
The governing body of European football also had a case to answer over farcical scenes at the 2023 Champions League showpiece in Istanbul, and it’s not until lessons are demonstrably learned by Aleksander Ceferin and his cronies that people’s trust will be regained (if indeed it ever is).
