In France and Britain, outbreaks of violence around the Champions League final have sparked a heated debate about who is to blame. France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had accused “thousands” of British Liverpool fans on Saturday evening of forcing their way into the stadium with fake tickets and attacking stewards. He thanked the police for their efforts. There had been more than 200 injuries and chaos around the stadium. The match started after a considerable delay.
In the British media, on the other hand, there are increasing accusations that no Englishmen were responsible for the violence. The Spectator, referring to television pictures, spoke of “young men who spoke astonishingly good French by Liverpool standards and boasted that they had come into the stadium for free”. According to France’s Le Figaro, most of those arrested were either French nationals or undocumented foreigners who had nothing to do with the match. The Sun reported that French police had assaulted Liverpool supporters and that there had been a haphazard admission control system.
Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin spoke of “allegations and false rumours”. According to the report, “of the 29 arrests in the immediate vicinity of the Stade de France, half were British”, “including nine for trespassing”.
In a television interview on Sunday, the leader of the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, had called the events at the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid a “humiliation” for France. She also rejected the claim that English fans had triggered the chaos. Meanwhile, she said, the Seine-Saint-Denis department, notorious for its high proportion of foreigners, was out of control.
Videos are circulating on social media showing brawls around the stadium. There are also increasing reports of Real Madrid and Liverpool fans being attacked, robbed and assaulted by youths in the streets.
“It hurts me and saddens me to see the City of Kings become a foreign enclave where people no longer dress the French way and order is maintained by gangs of thugs and drug dealers,” lamented presidential candidate Eric Zemmour on Twitter. Before the match, former world-class player Thierry Henry had also declared in a television broadcast: “The final is in Saint-Denis, not in Paris. Trust me, you don’t really fancy being in Saint-Denis.”
