French minister apologises to Liverpool fans after Champions League final disaster

June 11, 2022 at 8:48 pm GMT+1

France’s sports minister has written to Liverpool to apologise to fans for the events at the Champions League final in Paris.

Real Madrid and Liverpool faced off at the Stade de France on May 28, with the former coming away with a 1-0 win on the day.

The tie, scheduled to kick off at 8 pm UK time, did not get underway until around 8:40 pm for what UEFA described as ‘security reasons’.

Videos have since emerged of many fans being funnelled into small passages and being teargassed by French police.

#UCL Final delay: How it happened 👇

Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol is outside the Stade de France where "the situation has now calmed down." pic.twitter.com/gkQ0krPVTF
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) May 28, 2022

Now, as reported by The Times on Saturday, French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra admitted there were “several successive failures” by the French authorities at the Stade de France which led to thousands of fans being locked out and French riot police using tear gas often indiscriminately.

“We regret that some of them had to witness scenes that have no place at all at a sporting event, all the more so as we are aware that it may have brought back particularly painful memories from your club’s history,” Oudéa-Castéra said.

An official 30-page report commissioned by the French prime minister blamed operational failures, poor signage, a lack of information and reduced train station facilities for the problems. The report also accepted that there were 1,644 fake tickets in the Liverpool end and a total of only 2,589 - far fewer than the initial total that was alleged after the final.