UPDATE - Champions League fiasco: France works to shift blame to counterfeit tickets

UPDATES WITH COMMENTS FROM FRENCH INTERIOR, SPORTS MINISTERS; CHANGES TO HEADLINE, LEDE; EDITS THROUGHOUT

By Shweta Desai

PARIS (AA) – As France faces flak for Saturday’s chaos surrounding the UEFA Champions League final, the country’s leadership worked to shift the blame to Liverpool supporters for arriving at the stadium with counterfeit tickets.

“The evil at the root at the origin of the situation on Saturday evening: massive and industrial fraud,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday, adding that “70% of the tickets presented for pre-screening were fake.”

Darmanin and Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera spoke after a meeting with UEFA to investigate the causes of the ruckus during the final match between England’s Liverpool and Real Madrid.

Darmanin said British football supporters have a troubled history, citing the 2019 final between Liverpool and Tottenham in Madrid, Spain and last year’s Euro cup final between England and Italy at Wembley. He also blamed the Liverpool coach “who called on supporters to come to France even without tickets.”

“We ended up with tens of thousands of British supporters, some of whom respected the rules perfectly, but a tiny part jostled the authorities,” he said. Over half of the 29 people arrested at Paris’ Stade de France, the match venue, were British, he added.

Darmanin and Oudea-Castera have stressed an excess crowd of 30,000-40,000 supporters who came to the stadium with fake tickets or without tickets.

Darmanin said he regretted the difficulties experienced by visiting British and Spanish supporters but defended the pre-screening of tickets outside the stadium, saying: “Undoubtedly this made it possible to avoid a tragedy and deaths.”

- 30,000-40,000 ticketless supporters ‘delusional,’ ‘not possible’

Thousands of supporters were stuck in queues on Saturday night as security teams were buckling under the pressure to handle the ticketless crowd.

The metal gates were jammed due to fake tickets, and several supporters broke through the security cordons to enter the stadium, spurring police to fire tear gas. The chaotic scenes caused a 35-minute delay in the start of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, which the Spanish side won.

Oudea-Castera said it was unfortunate that 2,700 people were unable to attend the match despite holding official tickets and asked UEFA to compensate them.

But not everyone accepted France’s claims about the influx of Liverpool fans holding no tickets or faked ones.

Pierre Barthelemy, a member of the France Supporters Europe association who attended the match, called the figure of 30,000-40,000 fans without proper tickets or any at all “delusional.”

“These figures, which are not at all sourced, have become a pretext for a political whitewash,” he told BFMTV news.

British and Liverpool officials also pushed back at the French explanation.

Appearing on RTL News, Rodolfo Amaya, the head of Liverpool’s official supporters' club in France, scoffed at Oudea-Castera’s claims.

“Liverpool supporters are used to traveling without a ticket, but 30,000 to 40,000 people with fake tickets creating a ruckus in front of the Stade de France is not possible,” he said.

Nadine Dorries, the UK secretary for digital, culture, media, and sport, has joined Liverpool in demanding an inquiry into the troubling events that marred Saturday’s final, in which Real Madrid won 1-0 to clinch a record 14th Champions League title.