France’s justice minister Gerald Darmanin has said sorry to Liverpool fans for wrongly accusing them of the chaos before the 2022 Champions League final. The final between Liverpool and Real Madrid at Stade de France in the northern suburbs of Paris saw fans facing dangerous bottlenecks, teargas from police, and attacks from local youths. Darmanin, who was the French interior minister at the time, along with sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera, blamed “British fans” for arriving late with “fake tickets” at a press conference two days after the final. They claimed that up to 40,000 fake tickets were circulating near the stadium.
In March 2023, UEFA announced that they would refund the 19,618 Liverpool fans who attended the final after an independent report pointed fingers at the European football governing body and French authorities for the chaotic scenes. Darmanin admitted his mistake on the Legend show on YouTube, saying, “Yes, 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 culprit was easy (to designate), and I apologise to Liverpool fans. Of course they were right to (feel upset).”
He also mentioned, “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.” Darmanin acknowledged that security measures for the final were insufficient, with forces unprepared for thefts and assaults from external gangs. “Our security system wasn’t designed for that at all,” he said. “The CRS (riot police), mobile gendarmes with big boots and shields, they’re not great for running. We got our system wrong. We were expecting a hooligan war, and instead we got people who came to steal.”
The 2022 final was originally planned to take place in St. Petersburg but was relocated to Paris in February that year by UEFA following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
