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THE French Interior Minister has blamed “fraud at an industrial level” for chaos at the Champions League final in Paris with 70 percent of tickets attempting to come into the Stade de France thought to be fake.
Saturday’s game at the Stade de France between Liverpool and Real Madrid kicked off with a 36-minute delay after police tried to hold back people attempting to force their way into the French national stadium without tickets, while some ticket holders complained they were not let in.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said thousands of fake tickets had caused the mayhem that ensued as Liverpool fans attempted to enter the stadium on Saturday evening.
“At 21:00, when the match was supposed to start, 97 percent of the Spanish supporters were present, only 50 percent of the British supporters had got into their section which does show the difficulties that arose only from the entrance relating to the Liverpool supporters and not the other entrances,” he said at a press conference addressing the crowd problems.
“There was massive fraud to an industrial level and organisation of fake of tickets because the pre-filtering by the Stade de France and the French football federation saw that 70 percent of tickets were fake.
“Once through the pre-filtering stage, 15 percent of tickets were fake, more than 2 600 were non-validated tickets even though they’d gone through the first filtering.
“The massive presence of these fake tickets was the issue which meant there were delays. There were 29 arrests that took place within the Stade de France and more than half of those arrests were British supporters because they’d intruded inside the Stade de France.”
French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera added 30 000 to 40 000 people were without tickets or fake ones and that “everyone wants to ensure this will never happen again”.
She said: “Some people had bought tickets and were deprived of a match and we would like to say how sorry we are to all those people because their Saturday night experience was completely spoiled. We have asked Uefa those people should be identified and could be compensated soon to try and overcome their frustration.
“The major central point is to really understand precisely what happened during this massive fraud as far as the ticketing is concerned. There are witnesses of this and figures corroborate that 30 000 to 40 000 without tickets or with fake tickets. The fake tickets looked incredibly like normal tickets which meant some controls didn’t notice it.
“We want there to be a very detailed, in-depth enquiry with Uefa to see what happened, why, how and to what extent. Uefa has heard our request and we’re waiting for the rapid setting off of this enquiry.”
Earlier yesterday, Oudea-Castera had blamed Liverpool fans who turned up without valid tickets.
Oudea-Castera told French radio RTL: “What happened, first of all, was this mass gathering of the British supporters of the Liverpool club, without tickets, or with fake tickets.”
Uefa blamed “thousands of fans with fake tickets” for causing delays, while UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries and Liverpool called for a formal investigation into what caused the chaos. — Sky Sports
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