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.

Image credits: Flickr

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:

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.

Inadequate Emergency Response with Students

Jennifer Machin on 15 December 2022

Emergency services. Our saviours, heroes, idols. But what if you’re a student? Students are crazy, raucous and out of control, aren’t they? Well, that’s how they see us. They ignore us, condescend us and brush us off, but what happens if it’s a real emergency? Why would they take that risk. Their stereotypes risk our lives. Are we not worthy of help, support, and safety? 

I had an emergency recently. It was Halloween, my friends were over, and the evening culminated in a brick through the window. I don’t know the boys who stormed into our house and got aggressive when we asked them to leave. I didn’t want my refuge of a home to be attacked, and yet the emergency services made me feel like it was my fault. No, I was not out of control, nor at a wild party, I just wanted to feel safe in my own house. 

Now, as soon as I said the magical word ‘party’, she ceased to take me seriously. I had been threatened and had my home damaged, but I’m a student, I must deserve it for being a nuisance and having a ‘party’. I begged her for help, petrified of sleeping in a house that felt unsafe, and she disregarded me. What if these boys had come back? What if others saw our house as an easy target? She said it was no emergency, and that I should get some “perspective”, as the police are busy with ‘real emergencies’ and won’t be coming. But why should I have to worry about the police being overworked? That’s not my job, especially not when I have my own quandaries. I needed safety, protection, and support in a scary moment, and she failed. 

The police get the blame for not attending crimes, but do they even get reported? These call responders judge us and hold our lives in the balance through their directives to the police, and yet they don’t take us seriously. There appears to be plenty of police available for noise complaints and street paroles, but when an actual incident happens, where are they? We receive letter after letter threatening us with fines for noise complaints, with even groups of 3+ risking fines for ‘antisocial behaviour’, yet real emergencies are brushed aside.

In their eyes, we are the perpetrators of crimes, not the victims. When we have been victimized, they attribute it to our own stupidity and carelessness. They see us as perpetually drugged up and arrogant children, but we are academics and avid researchers, Even if some recreationally experiment, are they not worthy of help too?

This occurs far too often, and victims of crimes should not have to worry about police availability. Emergency services should be funded enough to support us, whether that is a local or national government issue. What if one day the risks they take on our lives ends badly? What if their neglect causes injury or even death, just for their pre-existing prejudice? We are easy targets, young and inexperienced in being adults, and their lack of aid exacerbates this. We are a generation of neglect, unimportant to our society and thus left to help ourselves.

This is not the first time the emergency services have ignored me or other students and it won’t be the last time. Unfortunately, it is not just the police who are controlled by these directives, but also ambulances and fire services, making all incidents a risk for us. These systems are in place for a reason, yet a few call operators hold this power of saviour or ignorance, not always making the correct choices, especially when it comes to young people and students.

To all students reading this, please stay safe and cautious. We cannot let people brush these incidents aside, especially when they belong to the exact services that are created to help us. No matter the funding issues, we deserve safety and support too.

Image Credit: PickPik

Adultification Bias: the effect of racial prejudice on policing and beyond

Kitty Handford on 25 March 2022

A fifteen-year-old black schoolgirl, known only as Child Q, was strip-searched by police officers in 2020. The police were called because a teacher reported that the girl smelled of cannabis, but no drugs were found; the shocking news has hit the headlines in recent weeks. The disturbing event, which took place in an East London school, has triggered widespread condemnation due to its horrific details.

The young girl was removed from an exam, forced to strip naked whilst menstruating and told to remove her sanitary pad. The police officers subsequently told her to reuse the pad without allowing her to use the bathroom to clean up. 

Following the event, a council report was carried out and concluded that racism was likely to have been an influencing factor. The mother of the girl stated, “Professionals treated her as an adult. She was searched as an adult. Is it because of her skin?” This question is an understandable one, and adultification bias is likely to be a key factor in this horrific incident.

Adultification bias can be understood as a form of racial prejudice in which children of minority groups, particularly black children, are viewed as being more mature or older than they really are. This form of bias is particularly dangerous when it influences authority figures, such as the police. In this instance the young girl was treated as an adult, there was no safeguarding in place, and there were no other adults present in the room. The girl’s mother has described how this despicable incident has transformed her “happy-go-lucky girl [in]to a timid recluse that hardly speaks”. 

Sadly, adultification bias towards black children and teenagers is not a rare occurrence. In 2017 a report was published titled ‘Listening to Black Women and Girls: Lived Experiences of Adultification Bias’. The report found that adults perceive black girls to be more mature and less innocent than their white peers from as young as five years old. Even more disturbing, the report suggested that adults have less empathy for young black girls than for their white peers, whom they view as more innocent, more in need of comfort and more in need of protection.

Negative stereotypes of black women, the report suggests, are a strong influencing factor in the adultification of black girls. These stereotypes of the angry, aggressive black woman and of the hypersexualised black woman often emerge from portrayals of black women in the media, and have become dominant cultural paradigms. These stereotypes become particularly dangerous when they influence the treatment of children by adults in positions of power, such as teachers or, more strikingly in the case of Child Q, by law enforcement. The case of Child Q sadly exemplifies that when professionals perceive children as more adult, their wellbeing, safeguarding needs and rights as children can be diminished or overlooked. 

Jahnine Davis, the director and co-founder of Listen-Up, a company established to amplify lesser heard voices in child safeguarding, spoke on the case of Child Q. She discussed how events like the treatment of Child Q are sensationalised by the media and cause short-lived responses of anger. Instead, she insists that these cases should open up larger discussions of the ‘everyday racist, racialised experiences black children have to navigate and encounter across all systems and services’. Further, she expresses how we must assess, societally, the foundations of adultification bias which affect young boys just as much as girls.

We only have to look as far as the disparity in the policing of drug offences in the UK to see how black males experience prejudice in the criminal justice system. Much research has shown that the policing and prosecution of drug possession in the UK is excessively focussed on black and minority groups. If young black males are being stopped and searched, arrested and prosecuted disproportionately more than their white counterparts, we must consider where adultification bias is coming into play. Young black males, Davis states, are stereotyped as deviants and gang members. These stereotypes, she stresses, dehumanise black children and drastically impact safeguarding duties.

In the aftermath of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests it is disheartening to be reminded that systemic and institutional racism is still prevalent in the United Kingdom today. Labour MP Diane Abbott writes of how dispiriting this story is, noting that after “decades of marching, demonstrating [and] campaigning, police practice is as bad as ever”. The publication of this report is a stark reminder that there is much still to be done to tackle racism in the United Kingdom. This case sadly indicates that black children in the UK are not safe from mistreatment by the police, even at school, a supposed place of safety.

Header Photo Credit: Unsplash

Woodhouse Moor cordoned off after body found in park

Josh Elgin on 5 November 2021

The body of a man has been discovered in Woodhouse Moor this morning, police have confirmed.

A cordon has been set up near the Library Pub after West Yorkshire Police were called to the park this morning at 7.07am.

The police are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the man’s death.

A West Yorkshire Police spokesperson said: “At 7.07am today, police were called to Woodhouse Moor in Leeds where the body of a man had been found. A scene is in place and enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances of his death.”

Image Credit: Josh Elgin

#KillTheBill and the UK’s decline into authoritarianism

Emily Bell on 23 March 2021

Before the end of 2021, it could be illegal to stage a noisy protest in the UK. If passed, the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will drastically limit the right to protest and has been heavily debated since the much-criticised police response to the London vigil for Sarah Everard in March. The new regulations are set to be introduced if they pass a final reading in Parliament in June.

Under the proposal, individuals could be jailed for up to 10 years for causing “serious annoyance or inconvenience”. Police could impose legally binding restrictions on rallies because the noise generated “may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation” or may “have a relevant impact on persons in the vicinity of the protest”. Start and end times could be applied to protests, and the bill seeks to change the threshold for an offence so that it has been committed even when a person did not know they were breaking the law. Moreover, controls could be put in place on protests by a single person.

These regulations afford the police significantly more power and, when compared with police authority now, it represents a dramatic shift. Under current rules, if the police want to place restrictions on a protest they must be able to demonstrate that it may result in “serious public disorder, serious damage to property, or serious disruption to the life of the community”. The concept of “serious annoyance or inconvenience” is a significant departure from the accepted rules governing freedoms of assembly and protest. Article 11 of the Human Rights Act protects these freedoms and, by handing the police more power in this way, the government is arguably contradicting the act. Indeed, as was demonstrated at the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard, the police are not in the best position to wield such power.

But is handing the police and the state more control over our lives in this way simply another indication of our increased willingness to accept government authority? History has shown that when a government is given more jurisdiction, they are often reluctant to return it – the Second World War being one notable example. As part of the effort to tackle COVID-19, the Coronavirus Act allowed the government unprecedented levels of control. However, authoritarianism in the name of public health is still authoritarianism. Whether this act was necessary is a debate for the future inquiry into the government’s handling of the virus – the current debate should be focused on the fact that the UK is sleepwalking into a police state. The willingness of Conservative Party MPs to wave through such dangerous proposals is an indication of this decline, but the visceral public reaction gives a glimmer of hope.

The problem for those opposed to the suggested regulations is that this legislation is not just about protest. It is a long and detailed bill, covering sentences for sex offenders and people who assault emergency workers, as well as homicide reviews involving offensive weapons, and reforms to pre-charge bail. Naturally, one of the primary motives for combining these proposed changes is that it makes it harder for MPs to vote against the bill. By voting against the bill to uphold the right to protest, MPs are also voting against tougher sentences for paedophiles. Therefore, the correct response should be to lobby for the removal of the section of the bill pertaining to protests and to push for the rest of the bill to be passed without it.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a clear and significant danger to democracy in this country. If it passes its third reading in Parliament, a crucial human right will be under threat. But arguably even more frightening is the wider trend we are seeing in British politics of the handing over of power to the government, of which this bill is but a symptom. Over the last year, we have seen the state wielding unprecedented levels of control over our lives, for good or for ill. What matters now is that we do not allow authoritarianism to become the accepted form of government in this country.