If there’s anyone who doesn’t need to be told about the mishandling of last season’s Champions League final, it’s Liverpool fans but the UEFA President appears to be shifting the blame in his comments about the game at the Stade de France.
In an interview with Gary Neville’s The Overlap YouTube channel (via The Times), Aleksander Ceferin said: “I feel sorry for what happened and we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again, that’s the most important thing for me.
“When I went to the match, I had a meeting with the King of Spain and someone came and said there is a problem with some entrances with the fans.
“We didn’t know how serious that was back then, because Uefa does not have jurisdiction outside the stadium. The French police did not communicate with us…
“It was hard to check what was right and what was wrong, we got some strange information. I really didn’t know the scale of the thing that was happening.”
There will be many who will scoff at the words of the man in such an important role at Europe’s footballing governing body and be simply in disbelief about what he has said regarding not knowing about the events outside the stadium.
For our supporters to be chased around by Police with pepper spray, locked out of entering the ground and missing kick-off but the people in charge of the event never knew – seems impossible to believe.
If those in power hadn’t been so concerned with packing the stadium with their own clients and sponsors and spent less time schmoozing their rich and powerful friends, rather than thinking about the turmoil that was occurring outside, there could have been more consideration of the actual fans at the game.
We all know better than to believe most of the comments of those in power and this is just another sad example.