Independent Panel finds UEFA and French Authorities responsible for Champions League Final Chaos, absolving Liverpool fans

Billy Stewart on 27 February 2023

The 2022 Champions League Final in Paris was one of the most eagerly anticipated finals of recent years. The game itself was not the spectacle it was billed to be, with Real Madrid edging out Liverpool 1-0. However, events on the pitch were to be overshadowed events by off it.

Fans were subjected to dangerous crushes, excessive use of tear gas, muggings, and assaults by local gangs. It was clear that the authorities were woefully unprepared for the event, and what preparation they had done had contributed to the chaos which almost ended in disaster.

Shockingly, the French police intelligence report on the Liverpool fans wrongly associated the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 with football hooliganism. According to a report by Michel Cadot, delegate from the French sports ministry, this shameful misconception informed the authority’s decision to deploy riot police and utilise the heavy-handed policing that Liverpool fans fell victim to.

Even before a ball was kicked, UEFA and French authorities began to deflect blame onto the Liverpool supporters. A message was displayed on the TV screen inside the stadium, explaining that the delay of kick-off was ‘due to the late arrival of fans at the stadium.’

This was simply not the case. Liverpool fans had been outside the ground in their thousands for hours. Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol stated that he arrived at the ground four hours before kick-off, and that he was “shocked at how many supporters had turned up.”

The issue was in fact caused by the funnelling of thousands of fans through narrow bottlenecks, and through minimal turnstiles, creating dangerous crushes.

The chaos continued after the game. Both Real Madrid and Liverpool fans were again subject to muggings, robberies, and attacks by local gangs. UFC star and Liverpool supporter Paddy Pimblett likened it to a scene from The Purge, as many of the gang members wielded baseball bats, machetes, and knives. Many fans have since stated that police were nowhere to be seen, yet another example of the gross neglect and lack of preparation that had put supporters’ welfare at risk on numerous occasions.

Charlie Pyne, a third-year student here at Leeds, was in Paris on that day. He told me about his experience.

After the game whilst looking for a hotel, he was attacked by a local gang and robbed, and was rejected from hotel rooms because he was bleeding. Whilst looking for a place, he was attacked again and ended up spending the night in the hospital. Charlie told me that ‘some people saw some pretty messed up things and the police did nothing about it’ and that Paris on that night was ‘one of the few places I’ve been where I felt unsafe.’

All the while, UEFA and French authorities continued to try and deflect blame from themselves, and onto Liverpool fans. The response of authorities in the days following events at the final only fuelled the overwhelming sense of anger and injustice amongst fans.

Take this tweet from Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, French Minister for Sport, after the Final:

Bravo @realmadrid pour ce 14è titre en #LigueDesChampions ! Les tentatives d’intrusion et de fraude de milliers de supporters anglais ont compliqué le travail des stadiers et des forces de police mais ne terniront pas cette victoire. La violence n’a pas sa place dans les stades.
— Amélie Oudéa-Castéra (@AOC1978) May 28, 2022

Similarly, French Interior Minister, Gerard Darmanin, blamed “fraud at an industrial level,” claiming that over 70% of fans outside the stadium were either ticketless or possessed fakes. Darmanin held British fans entirely accountable for the problems, stating that “difficulties arose only from the entrance relation to the Liverpool supporters and not the other entrances.” His statement was strongly condemned by Liverpool and the French left and right wing. Polling found that 76% of the French public did not believe his statement.

On May 30th UEFA announced they were commissioning an independent report into events surrounding the final. The panel published their findings in a 220-page document on Monday 13 th February.

The panel concluded that there were two key organisational failures that led to the chaos. These were the UEFA ‘model’ for organising the final, as well as the safety, security and service model used which was used on the day, based on incorrect assumptions that Liverpool fans posed significant threats to public order. The panel made 21 critical recommendations to ensure the safe passage for all football fans at future UEFA matches.

You can read the full review, including all 21 recommendations issued by the independent panel by using this link.

Liverpool FC stated that it “welcomes the report into the chaos” and they have urged UEFA to “do the right thing and implement the 21 recommendations.” Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has stated that he thought “Paris was the worst possible (choice) in that specific arena on that day.” Liverpool supporters’ group ‘The Spirit of Shankly’ said that they “expect an apology for the lies and smears UEFA so quickly aimed at supporters.”

UEFA welcomed the findings of the report, stating that they are “currently analysing the findings of the Review” and that it intends to “announce a special refund scheme for fans.” UEFA General Secretary Theodore Theodoridis said, “On behalf of UEFA, I would like to apologise most sincerely once again to all those who were affected by the events that unfolded.” He also extended a further apology to Liverpool fans for “unjustly blaming them for the situation leading to the delayed kick-off.”

However, the efforts of UEFA and French ministry members to deflect blame from themselves is shameful, and their ‘special refund scheme’ will do little to erase the horror witnessed by peaceful football fans that day.

City in Crisis: Liverpool’s escalating gun and knife crime

Lydia Gray Rodriguez on 27 October 2022

Lydia Gray-Rodriguez writes about the recent crimes in Liverpool and the reasons behind this recent escalation

The Battle of the North: Leeds set to host the Christie Championships

Dan Thompson on 16 March 2022

Of all the aspects of life that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, sporting events feel like the most important of the unimportant. As restrictions were rumoured and then implemented from March 2020, organised sport in Britain came to an abrupt halt. This pause included university sport and the historic rivalries and competitions that come with them.

Today sees the return of one of the most prestigious of these university competitions: The Christie Championships. The triangular championship sees the universities of Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool face each other in over 30 different sports across one day.

Having been held since 1886, The Christie Championships are the second oldest sporting rivalry between British universities, behind Oxford and Cambridge, when the three universities were colleges of Victoria University. It is named after Richard Copley Christie, a professor of History and Political Economy in Manchester from 1854 to 1866.

The competition is returning to home soil this year, with the University of Leeds hosting the event today. Leeds’ last victory came in 2014 by securing 172.5 points to Manchester’s 161 and Liverpool’s 144.5. The triumph saw Leeds dominate across almost all fields, picking up 23 wins in the process. It has been eight years since that last victory, albeit with a two-year break, and Leeds’ competing students will be hoping they can recreate 2014’s impressive performance.

**Image Credit: Christie Championships**

Leeds dominated the cup in the 1990s and early 2000s, winning nine of out ten championships from 1993 to 2002. However, Manchester have since grabbed the headlines, securing 15 cups up to and including 2019. Leeds will be aiming to recreate their last win on home soil in 2011, which ended an eight-year hegemony for Manchester, and will need support from across the university to do so.

The tournament will be held across various sporting venues in Leeds, including The Edge and the Bodington playing fields. Full details of times and locations for each sport can be found here. Whether you’re a fan of football, badminton, equestrian, or ultimate Frisbee, there’s something for everyone.

Here’s hoping 2022 is a year to remember for the University of Leeds, and one in which we claim the Battle of the North.

Image Credit: Christie Cup Twitter

Liverpool’s Stone close out tour with a Sunday night show at Brudenell Social Club

Benjamin Forrest on 23 February 2022

Formed in Liverpool, indie rock band Stone have been making waves in the alternative rock scene since their performance at Reading and Leeds in 2021. A support slot for music’s biggest phony, Yungblud, soon followed. In early February 2022 the quartet embarked on a headline tour around the UK with sold out shows in Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and a homecoming show at Liverpool Art Club Theatre. The last date of the tour saw the group play a stormy Sunday night at Brudenell Social Club’s Community Room in Leeds, with support from Headshrinkers and Seb Lowe.

First on stage were Headshrinkers, a fairly standard modern rock band (though they brand themselves as post-punk, much like every other band trying to flog a record at the moment), they will likely be enjoyed by fans of bands like Sports Team. All in all, they were fairly decent, only let down by a disgustingly pretentious frontman. The same cannot be said, however, for the main support act Seb Lowe. Lowe appeared as a wannabe Billy Bragg – though, without any of the substance or talented lyricism of Bragg. His set was at best cringeworthy and at worst outright embarrassing. The world does not need another middle-class white man singing about how oppressed he is. This is not a dig at the political stance of Seb, much of his songs making very basic center-left statements, but if you want to hear anti-tory songs, there is a near endless list of better acts to listen to: The Tuts, The Menstrual Cramps, Oi Polloi, Elvis Costello, Bob Vylan, Witch Fever, Frank Turner, any band that was signed to 2 Tone Records and pretty much any punk band that is worth their weight. Put simply, Seb Lowe’s performance was uninspiring, boring and repetitive.

The headline act, Stone, gave an energetic live performance, frontman Finlay Power darting around the stage like a woodlouse under a recently removed rock. The performance itself was quite promising, the audience reacted well and matched the energy of the band – which was only dampened by the onstage presence of a guitar tech and tour manager who performed the role of concerned parents throughout the gig, dragging Finlay back in from his attempted stage dives. Stone performed a mix of their more well-known singles and a handful of new songs, including their latest single: the imaginatively titled ‘Stupid’. All these songs seemed to garner pretty good reactions from the crowd – the bulk of which seemed to be under the legal drinking age.

Overall, Stone were fine. Lead guitarist Elliot Gill, in particular, stood out as a brilliant musician with a great energy – which seemed to be the driving force for much of the band’s performance. Their main crime, in my eyes, was a lack of originality. There is nothing particularly new, unique or exciting about the group or its music. If you were to have closed your eyes at the gig, you could have easily believed you were listening to a plethora of other generic indie rock bands. To an extent, this could be forgiven – generic rock bands certainly have their place within the music scene, if only to make other bands look better – if it were not for the ridiculous levels of arrogance held within the group. Perhaps this was to be expected, with the group recently proclaiming themselves ‘The underground voice for the lost youth’ (in spite of the complete absence of evidence to support this claim). From the repeated and cringeworthy attempts from frontman Finlay to ‘open up the pit’ (incidentally, the word ‘pit’ should be viewed as being in massive inverted commas), to two men in balaclavas spraying cheap prosecco and throwing pints of beer over the crowd at the beginning of the encore for seemingly no reason other than to cause annoyance. The arrogance was palpable, the throwing of drinks felt particularly out of order given the high proportion of children in the audience (along with other people who didn’t much fancy their clothes to stink of cheap lager and prosecco). Audience members who throw pints at crowds during gigs are widely regarded as wankers, so my feeling is that bands should be held to the same standards.

With many festival slots planned for over the summer, plus another headline tour in May, Stone will no doubt encounter much more exposure and – with the support of people like NME – will probably become at least moderately successful with their generic brand of indie rock posing as punk. It is my firm belief, however, that the band will not last the test of time and will soon be forgotten along with all the other ‘flavour of the month’ generic indie bands – you don’t hear much from Vistas anymore, do you?

The Premier League postponement debacle

Mack Holman on 11 February 2022

Mack Holman discusses the issues surrounding the postponement of Premier League games due to COVID-19.

Liverpool Women’s Hospital bombing – should we be concerned about the effectiveness of our counter-terrorism system?

Josh Wright on 10 December 2021

Debut writer, Josh Wright questions whether the UK’s Counter-Terrorism policy is up to parr after the recent attack that struck a women’s hospital in Liverpool.

Home Secretary accused of fuelling anti-asylum seeker hatred after Liverpool attack

Abby Backhouse on 26 November 2021

Sunday 14^th November 2021 will forever be remembered by residents surrounding Liverpool Women’s hospital as a very near tragedy, when Emad al Swealmeen’s bomb exploded in a taxi outside the entrance.

What could have been has struck fear and confusion in the minds of the nation, still reeling from the stabbing of MP Sir David Amess little over a month before.

Emad al Swealmeen’s decision to take a taxi at 11AM that day, intending to inflict maximum harm on civilians has been turned over by Merseyside Police and the public many times.

Evidence of a note, letter or correspondence detailing his thoughts that day and the months leading up to it have so far, not been found. On investigation, there has also been little to no evidence that has come to light from peers that would suggest that he had a history of misogynistic views, being referred to as “absolutely genuine” by Malcom Hitchcock, who he lived with for eight months in 2017.

The stance of the UK terror threat level was switched to “severe” making it “highly likely” that another terror attack was imminent.

According to Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Matt Twist, a rise in national terrorism coincides with the removal of lockdown restrictions, making mass public gatherings hotbeds for acts of terror.

Despite there being no evidence of ideology linked to the attack, history suggests that further attacks usually follow, the intense media coverage providing motivation for others. The most senior counter-terrorism policing officer has thus urged the public to be vigilant in the run up to Christmas.

Using evidence of Emad having been refused asylum in 2014 and subsequent failed attempts of appeal in later years, Home Secretary Priti Patel spoke of a “dysfunctional asylum system”, stating it was “a complete merry-go round, the whole industry devoted to defending the rights of individuals causing harm” on a flight to Washington.

Her attack on the system and current laws surrounding appeals can be perceived as fuelling hatred towards an already opposed minority. A vicar at the St Philemon’s church, which al Swealmeen attended, spoke of a member of his congregation receiving death threats. He explained to the BBC that “because St Philemon’s has a number of asylum seekers, some on the fringes of church life are fearful of coming to church”.

According to Migration Observatory data from 2020, the top five most common countries of nationality of people seeking asylum in the UK were Iran, Iraq, Albania, Eritrea, and Sudan.

Of all refugees resettled in the UK from January 2010 to December 2020, around 70% were Syrian. The revelation that Emad al Swealmeen was a Syrian refugee fits into this unfortunate narrative.

Patel’s comments linking Emad’s motives to his failed application for asylum appear to have set a tone of resentment towards those who have faced some of the worst hardships and are trying to become law-abiding and valuable members of society.

While this incident can be used as a warning of the failures in the system for those seeking asylum, it is still to be seen whether any statutory changes will be made.

It is hoped by many that rather than divide, this incident will be a binder of communities, common value and respect for human life.

Image credit: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor