Liverpool FC vs Real Madrid - CL FINAL - May 28 [R]

Discussion in 'Liverpool' started by el-capitano, May 22, 2022.

  1. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    it's all so damn sickening.
     
    Samarkand repped this.
  2. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    It’s getting that soon the French government and police will be denying that there even was a game at the Stade de France on May 28th; in UEFA records any account of the game and the teams who played will be recorded as “unknown”.

    Remember I said many moons ago that the government, police and UEFA were f.ucking with the wrong team, the wrong fans? This sudden automatic complete deletion of files without any backups is proof that this is so.

    The top two UEFA security officials have acknowledged that not only were they not in Paris that night, they were actually in London as VIP guests for the Forest/Huddersfield promotion playoff the next day. Because everyone knows it’s impossible to get from Paris to London in anything less than 72 hours. I mean you have to take a train to Le Harve, then wait 2 days minimum for a cross-Channel ferry to Dover if there’s no fog, then another long wait for a train from Dover to London and then wait for the N18 bus to Wembley.
     
    Red Bird and el-capitano repped this.
  3. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    Jesus, this is so f.ucking French. And so f.ucking amateur if that’s not tautology.

    Oudéa-Castéra has now said there weren’t 40,000 fake tickets but 1,644 at the Liverpool end. Only a difference of 38,356 then.

    But, and here’s where you want to take the entire French government and Oudéa-Castéra in particular and hammer the f.uck outta them, Oudéa-Castéra says that the revised figure of 1,644 fakes was the cause for all the problems!!

    Ye Gods!!! Where to even f.ucking begin?
     
  4. newterp

    newterp Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jun 6, 2007
    North Potomac, MD
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    so what you’re saying is that you don’t believe 1644 fake tickets could cause three hour delays, failure of the police to open up certain gates, failure to have enough support staff in place, the need for pepper gas and teargas, and the utter and abject failure of policing after the game allowing for gangs to come and rob and beat up numerous fans from both teams? Is that what you’re saying?
     
    Red Bird and Samarkand repped this.
  5. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    There you go again with your facts and logic. How very…non-French of you.

    (Please allow 48 hours for the invention of more believable lies to support the present lies. Not fair to expect them quite so quickly).
     
  6. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
  7. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    our new training kit, I assume?
     
    Samarkand repped this.
  8. Red Bird

    Red Bird Member+

    Sep 30, 2003
    Oxford
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    #533 Red Bird, Jun 10, 2022
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2022
    They don’t like being held to account, do they? You can tell from the tone of the responses to questions— how dare you not believe what I have just said.

    I’ll say it again, the outrage in France seems, to me anyway, because of the hapless attempts at covering up rather than at the treatment of footballs fans and at the potential tragedy that could have happened. Cnuts.
     
    SamScouse and Samarkand repped this.
  9. speker

    speker Member+

    May 16, 2009
    Canada
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Samarkand repped this.
  10. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    And for all the systematic failures, it woulda been fine except for the 1,644 Liverpool fans with fake tickets. Seriously, that was said.

    Plus what was left not so much unsaid as unreported was that there were 2,589 fake tickets total. That means Real fans had 945 fake tickets. Not too much noise about those 945 tickets, huh?

    Another figure that’s not getting much publicity is that the now official estimate is that 2,700 Liverpool fans with valid tickets were denied entry.

    So more Liverpool fans with valid tickets denied entry than the total number of fake tickets between both sets of fans. But yet, according to the lying bastard French, even after an “official” investigation (*cough*whitewash*cough*), it was 1,644 Scousers with fake tickets what done it.

    I’ve never had any time for the “cheese eating surrender monkeys” jokes and the WWII jibes, but, well, y’know, it now looks like 1,644 Scousers brought Paris and Stade de France to a standstill.

    I reckon we could have taken all the Burgundy and Rhône vineyards (as well as Paris) had we had 1,700 Scousers.
     
    Red Bird repped this.
  11. Red Bird

    Red Bird Member+

    Sep 30, 2003
    Oxford
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    You know you learn something everyday. Always took the French for the people who tore down an entitled monarchy etc.but blow me down If’n they haven’t replaced that with a more grotesque caricature of representative democracy. French politicians of all hue behave like medieval aristocracy.
     
    Wingtips1 and Samarkand repped this.
  12. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    Had the same thought myself. When I was discussing the shambles that was Paris with a (United) friend of mine he observed, “well, there’s a reason they’re on their 5th Republic”.
     
  13. zaqualung

    zaqualung Member+

    Jun 17, 2015
    San Francisco
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Here's a very good article that touches more cogently on a lot of the issues that relate to policing (particularly football) in Modern France, and what some of the driving factors are behind the more menacing aspects. I'm still curious/fascinated as to why UEFA officials (with great fat-cat salaries for generally doing 'eff all ...) couldn't do the research to understand the state of play and thus have pre-empted this mess with sufficient cross-party planning for all possible problems....

    https://theathletic.com/3348240/2022/06/05/champions-league-french-police-football-fans/
     
  14. CB-West

    CB-West Member+

    Sep 20, 2013
    NorCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    UUUggghhh!

    I can't believe we lost the Champions League...to Real Madrid!...AGAIN!

    :mad::thumbsdown::(:mad:
     
  15. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    sons of bitches ......

    https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-policing-links-hillsborough-with-hooliganism
    The French authorities deployed riot police in large numbers at the Champions League final in Paris apparently due to a misconceived association of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster with hooliganism, according to an official report produced for France’s prime minister.

    The report by Michel Cadot, the French sports ministry’s delegate on major sporting events, appears to confirm many Liverpool supporters’ bleakest assumptions at the final, that the heavy-handed policing they suffered, including being teargassed, was informed by prejudice about their likely behaviour.
     
  16. bayred

    bayred Member+

    Liverpool FC
    United States
    May 28, 2018
    I recall awhile back a thread discussion of Liverpool hatred and some were suggesting its a thing of the past while I felt it was still alive and kicking. Seems to be doing very well in France these days. Pricks.
     
    SamScouse repped this.
  17. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    Tell me, just f.ucking tell me that we were expecting anything different?

    We all know the chants, the gestures on the terraces, the waving of The S*n, we know all of it. We get it from Everton fans (to their eternal shame), from United fans, from Chelsea fans, from a lot of fans.

    And yet all these clubs and their more reasonable fans are oh so quick and at pains to point out that these are the lowest of the low, the thickest, most stupid, most vindictive of their fans.

    So what’s the excuse of the French Establishment? To explain why they are the moral and actual equivalent of terrace scum?

    The official position of the French Government now is that drunken, ticketless Liverpool fans murdered their own at Hillsborough. That’s the level at which they’re swimming.

    Said it waaay up thread and it bears repeating: incompetent c.unts.
     
    SamScouse repped this.
  18. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    Silver lining time perhaps: it’s getting more and more difficult for UEFA to have a managed rather than independent inquiry on the back of this official report. They will need to be seen to be more understanding.

    This is also the start of schism between UEFA and the French Government of which I spoke earlier. UEFA are going to jettison the French and lump as much blame as possible onto the police.

    No way, no how can UEFA be seen to even vaguely support this report and this has given UEFA their out, maybe. But when the French have put themselves so far out along the plank, having to cop for false statements on the big screen at the Stade de France is a much easier job now, as odious as those statements were.
     
  19. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    I still don't see why UEFA would really give a shit about upsetting the French, or about how much the French swing in the breeze. UEFA don't police the streets or the crowds, and they can keep major games away from France for the next 10 years, without explaining why (or, best case, saying these events are why).

    Unless I'm missing something ....
     
  20. Samarkand

    Samarkand Member+

    May 28, 2001
    If it were say, Andorra, then you’d be spot on. But the truth of the matter is that for UEFA, France matters. Generally regarded as a top 5 country for the CL, present WC holders, Platini notwithstanding, a huge number of the UEFA civil servants, so to speak, are French and so on. Also bear in mind that in UEFA’s mind, France kinda bailed out UEFA after St. Petersburg went south as a venue.

    There’s a decent shout to be made that the French, from administrative and football perspectives are perhaps the most influential country in world football. There’s every reason for UEFA and France to be bffs.

    But what’s becoming more and more apparent is that there was a two-tiered f.uck up for the CL final. UEFA mismanaged the ticketing, the turnstiles, the security and communication at the Final in the stadium and France completely dropped the ball on pretty much every aspect of the organization of the fans. From the policing, to the signage, to the transportation, to routing the fans, to the intel.

    It would appear that whoever was the UEFA liaison security officer with the French police just did not do his/her job. The UEFA liaison person would certainly have been working with the French equivalent of the Football Intelligence Unit.

    This hooligan nonsense would have been cut off at the root. Or if not, there would then be a clear written trail saying the French police refused to cooperate fully or insisted on outmoded methods and intelligence.

    As I’ve been saying, UEFA’s plan seems to be to keep the head down and wait for the winds to stop blowing. And if those blowing winds catch the French, well then, less blame for us. I really suspect the calculations being done in Nyon these days are along the lines of how much of France do we throw under the bus and what’s the minimum responsibility we have to accept? And if we accept any responsibility, can we still blame France and not have the French be annoyed with us?
     
  21. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    ah. good stuff. ta, Samark.
     
  22. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
  23. zaqualung

    zaqualung Member+

    Jun 17, 2015
    San Francisco
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Well - before the outrage over another Hillsborough misconception takes over, it should be realized that no authority of any one sovereign country should be expected to know that false rumours from a 30 yr old incident in another country are at base completely untrue (so, their notions on Hillsborough can't be primarily blamed as 'the causative problem" here). Who knows, maybe they expected the hordes of English to bring Long-Bows as well.....?

    honestly, leaving that aside - this again shows the absolute ineptitude/laziness of UEFA - for the lack of practical and contemplative liaison that was seemingly not carried out.....
    Did the Internal French crowd control planning use data from any of the plethora of other big European games that LFC have been involved in in the past 5-6 years to see what they were, in fact, dealing with? Did they formally ask UEFA (their partners in setting up this major event) anything?

    Was policing bloody discussed at all?
    When a heavy presence of riot police is deemed necessary for an event by one of two parties hosting said event, any sentient being would think that the other party should be consulted as to any such necessity??

    Irrespective of the heavy-handedness of internal French police culture (and UEFA's likely insouciant lack of knowledge of this), UEFA has a responsibility to liase over these events to assess the working machinery of security and to give its recommendations. My guess is that none of any of this was done. They just probably assumed (whilst lunching at Maxim's on foie gras, oysters and Dom Perignon) that all would be well, and in any case, no-one knew their phone numbers....
    Clowns.....
     
  24. zaqualung

    zaqualung Member+

    Jun 17, 2015
    San Francisco
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Basically my above post is this - in a nutshell....
     
  25. SamScouse

    SamScouse Member+

    Jun 1, 2015
    Toronto
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    in case you can't access the Athletic piece.......

    https://theathletic.com/3356972/2022/06/16/liverpool-tear-gas-children/

    ‘I really thought I was going to die’: The children tear-gassed and terrorised in Paris

    Daniel Taylor

    Jun 16, 2022


    “I thought it was some kind of bomb. I was scared as I couldn’t breathe properly. I was scared because I had never seen any problems like this. I asked my dad, ‘Who was doing this?’ and he said it was the police. I was scared because I had always thought the police were good people to help us.”

    Carlos Clemente is nine years old and a Liverpool fan.

    A few weeks ago, his father, Carl, let him know the good news. They had tickets for the Champions League final in Paris. It was Liverpool versus Real Madrid in the biggest showpiece occasion in European club football. You can imagine his reaction: thrilled, excited, fully expecting it to be one of the best days of his life.

    What happened outside the Stade de France instead turned it into an ordeal he will always remember for the wrong reasons. It was a scene of panic, brutality and sheer chaos. It has been exposed as a scandal that goes to the top of UEFA and the French police. And there are people who witnessed this mayhem, close up, and feel lucky it did not end in tragedy.

    Carlos was one of the children who were tear-gassed, terrorised and traumatised and who have trusted The Athletic to tell their stories about the events that put thousands upon thousands of people in danger.

    His first game at Anfield was as a six-year-old. His favourite player is Mohamed Salah. Carlos had told his friends at school he was going to the final. Everything was in place for a magical experience.

    Yet there are photographs that show him after the match — and it is unmistakable terror on his face. His eyes are streaming. He is holding his dad close.

    “I didn’t know what it (the tear gas) was until my dad told me a few days later,” he says. “I had to put my Liverpool scarf over my mouth. A Liverpool fan – a nice lady – gave me a face mask and some water. My eyes were stinging and I was crying a lot. It lasted for around a minute, but happened on two occasions.

    “One time, the bomb landed in front of my dad and he fell over. I was scared. I just wanted to be with my mum. She phoned my dad and I was crying for her, telling her I was scared. I jumped into my dad’s arms. I wanted him to cuddle me.”

    There are other children around the same age who went through the same ordeal. Some have told us they are wary, frightened even, about going back to football.

    They talk about it being the scariest experience of their lives. Some are still suffering from the impact of the tear gas and, almost certainly, the psychological effects, too.

    “Watching those harrowing and distressing scenes of young children being pepper-sprayed or feeling the effects of tear gas is truly heartbreaking,” says Joe Blott, chairman of the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group. “Young kids on their parents’ shoulders, singing songs about their idols, pinching themselves that their parents had got them a ticket. A dream come true. A dream that turned into a nightmare.”

    Maxwell Pearce is 11 years old and a Liverpool fan.

    “I was really, really excited because it was the biggest game of the year,” he says. “I’ve always supported Liverpool. And, wow, we had tickets for the final.”

    He was with his father, Jade, in Paris and perhaps you have seen the photograph that went viral of them outside the stadium. Again, it is difficult to see so much trauma in a young boy’s eyes. Maxwell is wearing a Liverpool top, holding his scarf over his mouth. He is, in his father’s words “petrified… in bits, he thought he was being poisoned, he thought he was going to die”.

    It was not long after that picture was taken that they decided it was too risky, too dangerous, and gave up trying to get into the stadium. It didn’t matter that they had tickets. “I just want to go,” a sobbing Maxwell told his father. “I want to get out of here. Let’s go. Please, let’s go.”

    It is a relief, therefore, to find Maxwell smiling again when he arrives home from school in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, and changes into the new Liverpool kit that Jason McAteer has sent him as a gift.

    McAteer, a former Liverpool player, was also caught up in the trouble that involved gangs from Saint-Denis, one of the more notorious parts of Paris, picking off innocent fans outside the stadium. His wife, Lucy, was mugged for her watch and their son, Harry, was also attacked. McAteer saw the pictures of Maxwell and wanted to do something for him.

    But it is always going to be hard for a boy of his age to understand the sequence of events that has led to the French authorities admitting there were “multiple failures” in the management of the crowd.

    “We were sprayed with tear gas, and I still don’t understand why,” says Maxwell. “Everyone was shouting at me to get on the ground and cover my face with my scarf. I had no idea what was happening. Everyone’s eyes were really stinging. Everyone was coughing.

    “You struggle to breathe. You can taste it on your lips. I tried to wash my eyes from my bottle of water, but I didn’t have enough water. I was panicking because I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I was being poisoned. I really thought I was going to die.”

    Almost three weeks on, he is still suffering nasal problems. He has been to a doctor and the diagnosis was that the tear gas had left his nostrils red and inflamed. But Maxwell and his father know it could have been worse.

    They saw the gangs who were ambushing fans and stealing their valuables. The gangs were feral and indiscriminate and described as “malevolent individuals” in the initial 30-page report by the French government. Nobody was safe.

    “The Liverpool fans were really kind,” says Maxwell. “They formed a circle around me, making sure I wasn’t getting hurt. All the fans were helping, being really nice to me. That’s why I love going to Liverpool, because everyone is so nice. I don’t know if I’d go to France again, but I will definitely go back to Liverpool.”

    Everything, though, is still very confusing. Maxwell has been brought up to believe the police are there to protect him. So why, he wants to know, did they want to hurt innocent people? “I’d been so excited to see the game. I was looking forward to it for ages but everything was so scary I just wanted to go back to the hotel. I said to my dad, ‘I’m really scared, I want to go’. Then the police came up to the gate again, with their canisters, and that’s when we ran.”

    “It is healing quite quickly,” says Noel Welsh, removing his glasses to show the damage to his right eye. “It was more the shock, to be honest, because it was the last thing I expected. Physically, I’m all right. But I think it will always be with me. Every game I go to, it will always be playing on my mind.”

    Noel is 14.

    He was in Paris with his brother, James, and their father, Tony, as part of a group of eight. Noel was the youngest member of their travelling party and he is still coming to terms with being attacked outside the stadium by someone trying to steal his ticket.

    That, however, tells only part of the story bearing in mind he and his family were also caught up in the crush, on the approach to the stadium, when thousands of fans were funnelled into an underpass where there was not enough space for the number of people.

    “People were getting squashed,” says Noel. “I’ve seen pictures of what it was like at Hillsborough and it made me feel like that, and how they would have felt. There was one point when we were heading towards a concrete pillar and I thought we were going to go straight into it. I was scared. People were shouting, ‘This is like Hillsborough’.”

    “My dad has a bad back and I put my arm around him. My arm was getting squashed. I was in agony but I had to do it. The next day, we were in the airport and my ribs … I’ve never felt pain like it. I could hardly breathe. I think I must have done something to my ribs because of the pressure from so many people. I’m shocked no one got seriously hurt or, even worse, killed.”

    It is going to take time to get over what happened. Noel and his family got into the stadium just before half-time. But how could he enjoy what was left of the match after going through that kind of ordeal?

    His cousin, Ava, was also in Paris and took the photographs of Noel, battered and bloodied, after he and his brother were attacked.

    “This guy had jumped the queue,” says Noel. “People were telling him, ‘We’ve been queuing for two and a half hours’. But he wouldn’t move. He started telling me he wanted my ticket. We made it clear to him that I was 14 and ‘Why are you going to try to take my ticket off me?’. Then he whispered in my brother’s ear that he was going to slash my dad, stab him. And then he just started lashing out. He hit my brother first, then me. It all happened so quickly.”

    Their attacker — in his late twenties or thirties and well over six feet tall — was English, speaking with a southern accent. The Athletic has heard many stories about Liverpool’s fans looking after their own. It hurts that the person responsible might have been another supporter of Klopp’s team.

    James, who is 17, was knocked to the floor and has needed emergency dental work because six of his teeth are damaged. The UK police are involved.

    “My dad tried to report it to the French police (on the night) and they just pushed him away,” says Noel. “There was no one to help. They were just spraying everyone with tear gas. Four or five times, we got sprayed.

    “I couldn’t breathe. It felt like it (the tear gas) was going in everywhere it could: my ears, my nose, my mouth, my eyes, the back of my throat.

    “I just kept thinking, ‘Why are they doing this? And why are they doing it so often?’. I had to tell myself, ‘They’re not going to stop, you just have to get through this’.

    “It felt like I was suffocating. My eyes were stinging. I’ve never felt anything like it before. But that wasn’t the end, because they were still spraying us when we came out of the ground. It was like they had a new toy and they were using us for their bit of fun.”

    Elliott Anderson’s bedroom is a shrine to his favourite football team. The sign on his door reads, “Anfield Road”. A picture of his favourite player, Salah, is emblazoned on the red and white walls. Elliott sleeps beneath a Liverpool duvet. His head rests on a Liverpool pillow. His rug shows that famous liver bird. There is a Liverpool scarf hanging from the windowsill, a Liverpool drinks coaster, a Liverpool clock and on and on.

    Elliott is nine.

    He has just got back from primary school, munching a packet of crisps on the sofa, dressed in his Liverpool kit. And he is about to say something that even his father, Dean, has not heard him say before.

    “When it (the tear gas) started, I thought it was being dropped down from a helicopter. I could hear a helicopter above us. I started coughing. I didn’t know what it was. It just hit us. My nose was hurting, my throat too. It made me cry. People were shouting at the police, ‘There are kids here, this lad’s not even 10 years old’. But the police did nothing. They didn’t care.”

    He and his father had flown into Paris on the day before the match and, before everything turned sinister, there was plenty of time for sightseeing. One photo shows Elliott by the Eiffel Tower. Another shows him at Notre Dame. Others are taken at the fan park on Cours de Vincennes.

    After that, it is a frightening story. They arrived at the stadium in plenty of time but the gates were locked and thousands of people were outside. They waited, and waited, and slowly it became clear they might not get in. Then came the tear gas and the panic. Other match-goers gave Elliott water to soothe his eyes while he covered his face in his scarf.

    They were locked out and, just before half-time, Dean broke the news that it was hopeless. Darkness was falling. It was one of the hardest conversations he has ever had with his son. “I was really disappointed,” says Elliott. “There was nothing that could be done, and I just started crying even more.”

    The following day, Elliott was so exhausted and traumatised he did not have the energy to go to the open-top bus parade in Liverpool. Dean had booked flights so they could watch the homecoming for Klopp’s team. Instead, dad and son set off on the journey home to Retford, Nottinghamshire. They have subsequently discovered they were among 2,700 Liverpool fans with valid tickets who did not get into the stadium.

    Elliott, though, says it will not put him off going to matches in the future. He has already looked up the date of next season’s Champions League final in Turkey and, if nothing else, he has happy memories from the airport.

    “The Liverpool players were flying out to Paris at the same time as us,” he says, now smiling. “They were on the next plane to us. Virgil van Dijk looked across and waved. I waved back. At least we saw the players then.”

    The text is still on her phone. At 7.20pm UK time, shortly before the twice-delayed final was originally meant to kick off, Claire Whitehurst picked up her phone to send a message to her husband, Tom, asking for an update. Social media was buzzing with stories about Liverpool fans struggling to get into the Stade de France. She was starting to feel anxious. “Just seen the pictures,” she wrote. “Looks like my idea of hell.”

    What she did not know at the time was that her husband was still outside the stadium with their son, Harry, and their big adventure was turning into a nightmare.

    Harry is 14. He has Williams Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder, and it is chilling to hear what flashed through his mind in some of the more harrowing moments.

    “A bunch of people got tear-gassed right in front of us,” he says. “I remember seeing one lad and he was just ‘out’ in seconds. I was scared. I had a burning sensation in my throat. I thought I was going to be sick. There were a lot of people shouting and panicking and I was thinking, ‘What is this?’. For a second, I actually thought it was Putin starting the gas.”

    Harry is part of the Liverpool Disabled Supporters’ Association. He sits at the front of the Kop for home games and helps to put out the banners and wave the flags. Anfield is where he is his happiest. “It’s a big part of my life,” he says. “It feels like home to me. I know loads of people there. It’s just really nice, like a big family.”

    He has been going to games since the age of five and, three years ago, he was in Madrid to see Liverpool win the final against Tottenham Hotspur. It was, he says, the happiest day of his life. He and his dad hoped to return from Paris with similar memories.

    Instead, they encountered all the pandemonium, the dangerous crushes, the confusion, the hostility of the police, the aggro from Parisian gangs, and the awful feeling that they were in danger. They did not get into the stadium until just before half-time and, by that stage, the football felt almost immaterial.

    “It was really hard to enjoy it,” says Harry. “I just felt down. I was upset and angry. I’d been so excited about going. You get so hyped about the good days in your life. You go to the airport, you fly over, you sing, you party. We were having such a great time and then, as soon as we got to the stadium, it just went downhill.”

    It is a Liverpool-supporting family. Tom says he is relieved they did not have a third ticket because that would have meant Scarlett, Harry’s 12-year-old sister, being there. At home, Claire was trying not to panic, waiting for updates.

    Harry will be back at Anfield next season. But it hasn’t escaped his attention that a number of people in prominent positions, including the Paris police chief, Didier Lallement, and the country’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, tried at first to blame Liverpool fans for turning up late and accused them of having forged tickets on an industrial scale.

    “We all knew they were lying,” says Harry. “When they said there were 40,000 fake tickets, we knew it was a lie. Now the police have admitted the truth and apologised to our fans, but I’m not accepting it. If they’re saying, ‘We’re sorry, but we still think tear gas was the right thing to do’, why are they apologising in the first place?”

    The irony here is that when UEFA switched the Champions League final from Wednesdays to Saturdays it was to make it easier for children to attend. UEFA wanted to create more of a family atmosphere. Then the children arrived in Paris and look what happened to them.

    “I’ve been going since I was six and that was definitely the most frightening experience,” says Roman Renoldi. “Everything was scary. I felt trapped. My dad had to shield me, it was just horrible.”

    Roman is 11. He, too, was left in tears because of what he saw. He, too, felt endangered, vulnerable, small. And, like all the young fans who are telling their stories here, he understands it is important to get the truth out if the people who are really to blame are trying to pin it on Liverpool’s supporters.

    He talks about Hillsborough, too. Even at his young age, he knows what happened on that April’s day in Sheffield in 1989. He knows, mostly, because his father, Simon, was among the Liverpool fans when the crush occurred that killed 97 people. Simon went on the pitch and helped to carry the stricken on emergency stretchers made from advertising boards. What happened in Paris has brought back a lot of difficult memories.

    In the crush outside the Stade de France, there was the unmistakable sense that something could go terribly wrong again. “That’s when I started to panic,” says Roman. “My dad has told me about Hillsborough. At one point, when we got to our gate and couldn’t get in, I was asking my dad if we could go home or go somewhere else to watch it in a pub. I didn’t want to be there any longer.”

    The saddest thing, perhaps, is that every one of these children will always be distrusting of one of Europe’s great cities. All say variations of the same thing: it has put them off Paris forever. And who can be surprised when their visit to the French capital contained so many dangers?

    The story, for example, of one father, Danny Smith, who was set upon by a mob of locals carrying hammers and other weapons. They pinned him to the ground and stole almost everything he had. Danny’s leg was broken in three places. He has had surgery and it will be a long, difficult recovery requiring nine months off work.

    His 13-year-old son, Dan, was in Paris with him and witnessed everything.

    Kade Corfield was leaving the stadium with his father, John, around the same time. “My dad had tight hold of me and said, ‘No matter what, do not let go of my hand.’ I thought that was quite odd because usually we just walk out the ground together, laughing and singing, but this was different.”
    As they tried to find a safe route back to their car, the tear gas started. Kade is 12 years old and asthmatic.

    “I started coughing but my dad kept telling me, ‘Please, Kade, keep walking.’ He pushed my head into him to stop me from breathing any more in. I looked up at him and his eyes were streaming. He was coughing. I began to panic because I thought, ‘If I get separated from my dad, what do I do? I’m in the middle of Paris, it’s dark and late and I don’t know anyone.’ I squeezed my dad’s hand even tighter. More and more tear gas was coming.
    “When we got back to our car, I took my jacket off and my arms were red. My dad said it was his fault for squeezing me so tight to keep me close and not get separated. I didn’t even feel it, to be honest. I was so desperate to get back to the car. We didn’t do anything wrong, we just went to a football match, to watch the team we love.”

    Some of the other families who have spoken to The Athletic have talked about the possibility of their children needing counselling. Their parents are suspicious, to say the least, about the motives for the French authorities deleting CCTV footage when UEFA and the French government are holding separate inquiries. In some cases, the kids have found their experiences too upsetting to talk about.

    Nobody really mentions the game, or the result, because it felt secondary to everything else. Liverpool lost 1-0 but that is not the reason why they will remember May 28, 2022, as a harrowing, disturbing experience.

    It wasn’t a bomb. It wasn’t Putin starting a nuclear war. They weren’t being poisoned and the tear gas wasn’t being dropped from a helicopter. But who can blame these children, many of primary-school age, for thinking the worst?

    “Heartbreaking,” is the word that Blott uses, as the chairman of Spirit of Shankly, which will continue to lobby the French authorities. “I can only hope the effects on those young people are short term and that help and support is available to them.”
     
    el-capitano and Samarkand repped this.

Share This Page