Irish Examiner view: Sorry, not sorry for Paris troubles

Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said: 'If there was something that went wrong at the Stade de France, it was the fight against delinquency'

Monsieur Darmanin, a former mayor of Tourcoing on the Belgian border, initially blamed large numbers of Liverpool fans travelling with counterfeit tickets which they thought they could use to jib their way into the Stade de France. File photo: Adam Davy/PA

When you have done something wrong, and it necessitates issuing an apology, it’s usually a good idea to ensure that your victim(s) are directly addressed in whatever form of words you choose to proffer.

For this reason alone, the grudging comments of Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, who has expressed his regrets to “everyone who suffered from bad management” at the Champions League Final in Paris simply don’t cut la moutarde.

Monsieur Darmanin, a former mayor of Tourcoing on the Belgian border, initially blamed large numbers of Liverpool fans travelling with counterfeit tickets which they thought they could use to jib their way into the Stade de France. His estimates were so grotesquely high — 30,000 to 40,000 — as to cast doubt on his judgement immediately. 

The figure quoted by the governing body Uefa, 2,600 rogue tickets, many confiscated before getting anywhere near the turnstiles, while a worryingly high number even if true, is around 6% of what the French government initially stated. 

Let us hope that their budgetary projections do not have a similar back-of-the-Gauloises-packet feel to the numbers.

M. Darmanin posed a number of rhetorical questions while he stopped short of saying sorry to fans: “Should the Stade de France have been better managed? The answer is yes. Am I partly responsible? The answer is yes. Of course, I readily apologise towards everyone who suffered from this bad management of the event.” 

France’s two recent Nations League matches and the Top 14 rugby final all passed without incident but they were never likely to carry the same level of tension, and opportunity for robbery by local gangs, provided by visiting Spanish and English supporters of two of the biggest football teams in the world.

While M. Darmanin apologised to a French Senate committee hearing for “the disproportionate use of teargas”, not the best advertisement for the forthcoming rugby world cup and Olympics, he has also said “if there was something that went wrong at the Stade de France, it was the fight against delinquency.”

This is not going to do as an explanation, or as an apology. It is important that the football authorities, and the French government realise this.