adminBANGKOK. – Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has criticised the authorities who initially blamed the club’s supporters for issues around the Champions League final in Paris.
Supporters described heavy-handed policing, organisational chaos and overcrowding at the game on 28 May.
The match was delayed when long queues of Liverpool fans built up outside the stadium in Paris. French police used tear gas and pepper spray on some supporters.
A French senate report into the chaos is set to be released this week, amid claims it will cite “multiple organisational failure” ahead of Real Madrid’s 1-0 win.
The chaos – and the initial French response seeking to blame fans for the trouble – has prompted uproar in France, as well as in the UK and Spain.
Speaking to BBC Sport ahead of his side’s pre-season match with Manchester United in Bangkok on Tuesday, Klopp said he was told before the final that it was being delayed due to problems caused by Liverpool fans.
Klopp says lessons have to be learned.
“It was definitely not right,” he said of the initial rush to judgement.
“Before a game I don’t usually exchange a lot of messages. But the coaches were saying ‘our families are still outside’. Then the game is delayed, the Uefa guys pass and say ‘it’s because of your fans’. That’s the information you get, but you don’t know anything.
“Then you meet your family after the game – and nobody speaks about the result. Nobody speaks about the game. Everybody speaks about what happened around the stadium, not only on the way in, but on the way out as well. So now you try to figure out and bring together? How can that happen?
“So next morning, we pick newspapers and all of a sudden it’s ‘Liverpool fans did this’ and you think ‘Wow, how is that possible? What are they talking about?’ Because all the information I got immediately was if the Liverpudlians had not been as calm as they were, it could have been completely different, so much worse than it was, when it was already really bad.
“How can you deal with it? How can they go outside right away and tell you something is 100% true? You have to wait for all these different steps.
“Obviously now, step by step, we get more information about how it really was and who was really responsible. How could it have happened?
“Everybody needs to know about it, not because it will change anything for this game. But it has to be changed for the next games and for big events, wherever it will be because supporters have to be protected.” – BBC Sport
Online Reporter