French sports minister argues up to 40,000 fans turned up to UCL Final with no ticket or a fake one. Merseyside police (also on the ground in Paris) heavily dispute this. The number quoted is not specific to Liverpool fans, but all supporters. And here's why it's exaggerated...
French police told CBS on Sat around 95,000 fans arrived at the stadium or its vicinity. If 40,000 (going with this logic) didn't have a valid ticket then 55,000 did. Stade de France had a 75,000-capacity for the final. So 20,000 with valid tickets just didn't show?
Countless fans say the first security check scanned tickets to check their validity. If 40,000 had fake ones or no ticket they would have been turned away at this point. That means almost 1 in 2 people being sent back. I was in the crowd for over two hours and only saw a handful.
So either French police got so overwhelmed they stopped checking or the vast majority had a valid ticket and the notion of up to 40,000 without one is hugely exaggerated.
Other striking thing about the French police numbers is they claim "a few hundred" locals from Saint-Denis made things worse. The reality is it was more like a few thousand, with many in non-club colours. Whole narrative is geared towards wrongly pinning the entire chaos on #LFC.
In digital age you'd expect specific numbers. Scanning a legit ticket will clock each entry. That's why the attendance is accurate and must be for safety. A rejected ticket should also be logged. Police say they can't provide a specific number of scanned fake tickets. Why not?
The fact is by the time the crowd became congested, the gates were locked and the tear gas deployed, thousands of fans were still nowhere near any ticket check. So how can anyone determine an accurate number of counterfeit tickets?
French police have changed their narrative repeatedly. First fans were late. Next, 95,000 were in the vicinity (& how is this counted, too, especially when open barriers at the station. Police refused to elaborate). Now, up to 40,000 came without a valid ticket...
So using French police numbers, roughly 1 in 4 fans with a genuine ticket didn't even attend. Yet the stadium was full. So 20,000 got in without a valid ticket? It just doesn't add up and is clearly inaccurate.
A transparent investigation is needed. French police have their take (and general and inconsistent numbers) yet Merseyside police, plus countless journalists and fans on the ground, dispute this.
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