Champions League chaos proves football is run by authorities hostile to fans

Were the indignities experienced by fans a large-scale outbreak of bureaucratic incompetence or something more sinister?

Liverpool fans stuck outside the ground show their match tickets during the UEFA Champions League Final at the Stade de France, Paris. Picture date: Saturday May 28, 2022.

For once it is the still photos that capture the scene better than the videos. Were one to base one’s impression of the hellscape in Paris on Saturday night on the grainy, shaky moving footage alone, one would probably conclude it was a lawless, seething moshpit of disorder: of youths scaling spiked fences, gates being rattled and clattered, a ceaseless stream of teargas and baton charges. 

But the overwhelming sensation being conveyed by the thousands of fans massed outside the Stade de France was stasis: the quiet, festering frustration of nothing moving, nothing changing, nothing happening, a sea of thwarted humanity waiting patiently for hour upon hour, as if queueing for bread.