June 10, (THEWILL) – The head of the Paris police force has apologised to Liverpool fans for the “failure” that resulted in the horrible events that occurred before last month’s Champions League final.
Liverpool fans were tear-gassed and assaulted by police, who blamed the reported presence of “30,000 fans who arrived without tickets.” As THEWILL reported, champions, Real Madrid, also stepped forward to express their dissatisfaction with the treatment of their travelling followers.
On Thursday, a hearing was convened in Paris to try to figure out what went wrong, and police head, Didier Lallement, recognised that his department was to blame, saying: “It is obviously a failure. It was a failure because people were pushed around and attacked. It was a failure because the image of the country was undermined. Perhaps I was wrong [about the estimated number of fans]. Whether there were 40,000, 30,000 or 20,000, it didn’t change the fact that there were tens of thousands of people who could not fit in.”
It was also revealed at this hearing that the CCTV footage of the happenings outside the stadium had been destroyed, rendering Liverpool fans’ accusations of being mugged and attacked by locals tough to validate.
Erwan Le Prevost, the director of institutional relations at the FFF, said: “The images are available for seven days. They are then automatically destroyed. We should have had a requisition to provide them to the different populations [organisations]. The images are extremely violent.”
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
