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

Congratulations France on introducing so many kids to war; they deserved it, mind you, didn’t they? I mean they were Liverpool fans. Well done.

 

Just sent an email (subject line Congratulations France!) to the French Embassy. I copy and pasted The Athletic article and by way of introduction I wrote:

Congratulations France on introducing so many kids to child abuse and, I suppose a war situation; they deserved it, mind you, didn’t they?

I mean they were only Liverpool fans and eleventy billion and 46 of them had fake tickets or whatever ridiculous number that Gérald Darmanin and Amélie Oudéa-Castéra have been inventing this week. But well done, I’m sure 11 year olds everywhere now know not to mess with the French Police.

Oh, and did you know, Hillsborough was caused by hooliganism, that Liverpool fans murdered 97 of their own? Amazing what you can learn from the French Government.

Well done again on the kids.
Yours, etc. ​

 

those morons will probably take that as a compliment ie oblivious to the sarcasm.

 

They might. I was hoping for a job.

 

LOL

 

I mentioned waaay upthread that I expected David Conn of The Guardian to get involved and he has been. I know David personally and I describe him as the quiet, unassuming bulldog. He is thorough, meticulous and relentless. He does not give up until and unless there are answers. It was he who reignited the Hillsborough debate.

He is not going gently into that good night by any stretch. Given that we’re also in the phony war period of the football season with just transfers to keep us interested, he has the bandwidth to keep digging.

While his most recent article may not have the emotional heft of the one from The Athletic above, there is the continuing, relentless drumbeat of asking the questions and demanding answers. He will not be silenced and he will keep this disaster in the spotlight which is exactly what is needed.


Hardly a surprise territory: no reply from the French Embassy. Yet.

 

as always, thanks for the post Samark. good to know that Conn will stick with this.

 

you get the impression a lot of that kind of assholery goes on behind the scenes between players. but being a poor winner is as bad as you can get. reminds me of those twats at MC.

 

I'm only for shit-talking and nose rubbing when the opposing player had already talked his shit before/during the game and after you've vanquished him. I can't say that's the case here. Salah wanted "revenge" based on getting his shoulder f ucked by Ramos. He never disrespected Madrid.

 

He has that forensic mind which is rare in modern journalism. Before most had cottoned on to them, he had researched and outed Gillicks as a pair of no-good charlatans.

 

'Trauma' of disabled Liverpool fans fuels calls to strip Stade de France of RWC 2023 and Olympics
World Rugby and IOC urged to take action after children teargassed, a woman suffered a ‘grotesque attack’ and another a dislocated shoulder.

World Rugby and the International Olympic Committee are facing calls to strip the Stade de France from hosting their showpiece events ahead of an appearance of Liverpool fans at the French Senate on Tuesday.

The “horrendous” scale of the treatment of Liverpool fans at the Champions League final against Real Madrid will be laid bare in front of parliamentarians by Ted Morris and Joe Blott, the respective chairs of the Liverpool Disabled Supporters Association and the Spirit of Shankly fan group.

Morris has been compiling a record of the “traumatic” experiences endured by disabled fans, which include: disabled children being teargassed; a wheelchair user being crowd-surfed to safety over a fence; a blind fan being separated from their carer; a disabled woman suffering a dislocated shoulder; and a “grotesque” attack on a disabled woman as she left the stadium.

“The authorities failed massively,” Morris said. “I’ve emailed Lord Coe and Sir Bill Beaumont as well because I am of the opinion the stadium is not suitable to hold those two massive events after what happened to us. It was just horrendous.”

The Stade de France is due to hold the Rugby World Cup semi-finals and final in 2023 and then the Olympic athletics events in 2024. Morris and Blott are due to appear at 4.30pm on Tuesday as part of an inquiry by France’s Law Commission and will be sure to refute various post-match claims by the French authorities. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin has claimed that sections of the Liverpool fans posed “public order problems” and that 30,000-40,000 extra Liverpool fans had turned up to the match without proper tickets.

“We will bring the issue of disability to the French Senate and call out the untruths,” Morris said. “Our disabled supporters suffered greatly in Paris. The French have tried to use a narrative and playbook that has haunted this football club. And they have done it without basis or substance.

“We had nine games in Europe last season – there was not one single arrest. We went there for a festival of sport. There are a lot of people affected by this and we can’t allow this narrative to gain any more traction. We will provide testimonies of some of the horrendous experiences of our disabled supporters – families and children as young as eight. We hope to get some answers. We need to go there and tell the truth about what happened.”

Morris said that it was “quite unheard of” for fan representatives to be invited to the French Senate and that they were “grateful” for the opportunity.

Darmanin did subsequently appear to recognise some errors were made by authorities but Liverpool fans would like him to retract his earlier statements fully. “I would like to express our regret with regard to the organisation of the final because some people were not able to see the whole of the match,” Darmanin said. “I deplore the errors which took place before.”

'The authorities failed massively. It was just horrendous'
There were numerous eyewitness accounts of major congestion problems on the approach to the stadium and patient fans being locked out for almost an hour. There were also multiple reports of how local gangs assaulted and robbed supporters making their way back to coaches and trains after the match.

Didier Lallement, the head of Paris police, has since admitted he may have falsely stated up to 40,000 Liverpool supporters tried to get into the stadium with fake tickets. “Perhaps I made a mistake with the figure I gave to the minister,” Lallement said.

The police chief also acknowledged that there were not 30,000-40,000 “at the gates of the stadium” but maintained that many thousands were in the vicinity.

“It is obviously a failure because people were pushed and attacked,” Lallement said. “It’s a failure because the image of the country was undermined.”

The Telegraph has contacted the operators of the Stade de France for comment. The stadium is owned by the French government and France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, has said that “the priority now is to identify very precisely what went wrong … in order to learn all the lessons so that such incidents do not happen again at our future major international sporting events”.

 

The BBC had a story about this guy who took his 82? year old mother to the final. Huge longtime Liverpool fan going back yonks. She was wheelchair bound.

As they got close to the stadium, he produced his tickets at the wheelchair gate and there was some sort of trouble just as they entered. Either tickets came up as duds, feral youths rushed the gate etc. Police tear gassed all and sundry, including the 82 year in the wheelchair. Son was screaming at them, his mother was in obvious pain and trauma. Police wheeled her behind a portacabin because even they could tell that it didn’t look good to have an 82 year old woman in a wheelchair, wheezing, in obvious distress when the police were the only ones waving the tear gas around.

When the son asked why his mother was being moved he was told it was to allow her to recover and calm down. They implied she was being obstreperous which she definitely wasn’t, her son says. After some minutes, they want to move on, into the stadium but were stopped. Police said the mother was a threat. Argument started.

Police arrived with some sort of bicycle-type lock and locked her and wheelchair in place. No one listened to them after that. The poor woman was then left for 2.5 hours with no access to the bathroom and was only released after the final whistle.

But it was the 40,000 Liverpool fans...

 

Please stop with your inconvenient questions and logic. Do you know how bad you’re making the French police and UEFA look? Shockingly disrespectful.

 

SOS testified in front of the French Senate. Will post the links in a bit. Can’t help thinking that these hearing while well meaning, are just that: well meaning, but without teeth. Maybe I’m being too cynical.

 

Joe Blott the SOS chair testified to the French Senate. Here’s his transcript.

I might have been a bit more forthright, insisting that as the fans were beaten and tear gassed by the French police and subsequently blamed by Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra, that these beatings and tear gassings were done in the name of the French state and therefore by extension, in the name of all the senators present. That it was done in their name.

Then again, Blott did chose the more diplomatic route and you do catch more bees with honey, right? Nevertheless, a reminder might not have hurt.

 

I see the passive tense French Government apology tour has kicked off. Darmanin was on the radio in Paris yesterday and was full of “…mistakes were made” excuses. Oudéa-Castéra had a similar appearance also. They apologized to “all those who suffered from mismanagement”. Which, as apologies go, is about as weaseling as I’ve ever heard. I wonder how many insurance forms and medical reports had “suffering from mismanagement” as the cause of the problems?

Darmanin, in true right wing populist fashion then proceeded to blame the immigrants and the “yoots”. Without them black and brown fellas, everything would have been fine, obviously.

The problem for Darmanin and Oudéa-Castéra is that no one believes a word they say anymore and they’re stuck now trying to find a forum, any forum, to proclaim their worthiness, their effectiveness all the while looking to offload the blame onto anyone that’s not them. They’ve tried the Liverpool fans and they’ve been so badly burned; now they are going after the immigrants. We’ll see how long that lasts. Note: he has yet to retract the 40,000 fake ticket and ticket holders lie. His sympathies and apologies only go so far, it would appear.

Darmanin has also blamed the police to an extent, stating that he has profoundly changed the police HQ. I’m presuming he means the personnel and perhaps the reporting lines, rather than ordered new carpets and curtains, but it’s a really, really poor and awful leader who blames his reporting lines rather than admits/examines how he allowed his reporting lines to be so poor in the first place.

The French Government have recognized that they have nowhere to go in blaming Liverpool fans. They have switched the narrative to the immigrants with a dollop for the police. That won’t hold either and will change. I would imagine he and Oudéa-Castéra are going to get hammered by the French Senate report. And I would also imagine that the UEFA report is going to need somewhere to go because UEFA will not blame themselves, so Darmanin could very likely find himself in those crosshairs also.

I said waaay up thread, that UEFA and the French Government would eventually turn on each other because there is just too much evidence (god bless camera phones). That day is rapidly approaching. Also, don’t forget Anfield and Phil Scraton have yet to weigh in. It might quiet, but that doesn’t mean the wheels are not turning. This is far from over.

 

the rats being cornered ... good to see.

Anfield and Phil Scraton have yet to weigh in
UEFA and the French won't know what's hit them.

 

https://www.empireofthekop.com/2022...job-following-champions-league-final-debacle/

As reported by Daniel Austin: ‘Paris chief of police Didier Lallement is set to be removed from his job, in part due to his handling of the carnage at the Stade de France.

‘This would be a significant victory for Liverpool supporters who have fought to show the truth, and for the safety of anyone in Paris’.

 

A bit of a show trial, but it is significant. Chief of police is not your ordinary match day commander. There was a thought that they might go after the match day police rather than the feet-up, office police but my guess is that that would have been seen for what it is: protecting the higher ups by sacrificing the foot soldiers. Now there is no doubt that those trigger happy foot soldiers need to be brought to account, but getting rid of the chief is a good move, only if the broom doesn’t stop sweeping.

I wonder also how much of this decision to get rid of him was influenced by the troglodyte football intelligence unit (FIU) looking at 1989 rather than the behavior of Liverpool fans in Europe in the past 5 years? The FIU of course was made look even more stupid by the fact that they misread, misinterpreted and misinformed about Hillsborough to fit their narrative rather than reality.

As I’ve been saying, Anfield and Scraton have yet to weigh in, which is ominous if you’re French or UEFA. Furthermore even if it is a whitewash, we still have to hear from UEFA about their “independent” inquiry. But things have progressed so far since that announcement, the latitude for cover ups, lies and deflection has diminished considerably. It’s not like UEFA can come out now and declare that drunken, ticketless Liverpool fans arrived late and charged the turnstiles.

Wrong fans, wrong club, wrong city. That’s what UEFA and the French have f.ucked with and oh, how whole hands, not fingers, are now being burned, singed and charred.

 

'The French senate report outlining the findings of its inquiry into the UCL final at the Stade de France will call it a "fiasco" caused by "multiple organisational failures."

It is set to exonerate fans and will be released on Wednesday at 11am in the UK.'

www.francetvinfo.fr/faits-divers/incidents-lors-de-la-finale-de-la-ligue-des-champions-2022/incidents-au-stade-de-france-dans-un-rapport-le-senat-pointe-des-defauts-d-organisation-majeurs-et-parle-d-un-fiasco_5246953.html

 

Good find Sam. Didn’t know your skills extended to Google France.

My French is so-so but the general tone seems to be “those boys done f.ucked up”.

 

despite the constant barrage of abuse and general disrespect I get from some on here, I maintain my commitment to the cause.

 

'Didier Lallement is finished. The departure of the man who ordered the tear gassing of women, children and the disabled at the Stade de France will be official on 20 July according to @lemondefr. Good riddance to a wildly dangerous, incompetent liar.'

'Does whether they call it a sacking, a resignation or a retirement really matter? I don't care. Didier Lallement's final weeks in office saw him humiliated on an international scale by Liverpool and Real Madrid supporters who proved him a barefaced liar. That is his legacy.'

'A man who told a senate inquiry that he "didn't know any other method" of crowd control than tear gassing and charging is no longer going to be in charge of policing. That is an enormous win for everyone who attended the Champions League final and everyone who lives in Paris.'


^ from

Didier Lallement is finished.

The departure of the man who ordered the tear gassing of women, children and the disabled at the Stade de France will be official on 20 July according to @lemondefr.

Good riddance to a wildly dangerous, incompetent liar.https://t.co/newYBbKNn1

— Daniel Austin (@_Dan_Austin) July 10, 2022

 

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.