Fuck UEFA And Fuck The French Lying Cunts

[KMD7]

 

[Jimmy Hills Chin]

12 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

Shock and horror. Uefa in jobs for the boys news. Cunts. 

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fe374b34-e41d-11ec-a6dd-97fa9f1901cf?shareToken=b66da4fec7bba51932a3019751b197c5

Shit like this is the reason that turns me more and more towards misanthropy. The amount of corruption, back handers and shady shit in all walks of life leads to the opinion that most people are cunts. 

[Barrington Womble]

32 minutes ago, Jimmy Hills Chin said:

Shit like this is the reason that turns me more and more towards misanthropy. The amount of corruption, back handers and shady shit in all walks of life leads to the opinion that most people are cunts. 

For me what shows the level of arrogance with their corruption is he gets a job that was never advertised for his best mate.

 

Over the years I've hired loads of people I know, sometimes friends - my view is you can never learn in an interview or two what you can from working with someone for months and years. But when you do that in a big or high profile organisation, you need to separate yourself from the process slightly, allow a process to happen where at least internal people get a crack at the job and then progress on a short external process if nobody internal is suitable. You have to be seen to be fair. They're so fucking arrogant, that despite cerferin being this fellas best man, they thought they could just parachute him in to such an important position.

 

It illustrates how little regard cerferin and uefa have for the safety of football fans. It also illustrates those words on the back of the ESL that fans must come first is nothing but lip services while fans could provide them with a service, once they got what they wanted, fans were no more than a nuisance. The first chance they've had since then, their 2 major club finals have been complete disasters. We should refuse to take part in uefa competition while these cunts are still in their jobs and whole scale change is implemented in uefa. 

 

And obviously that won't happen because we want uefa's cash. 

[Scott_M]

It’s in French but subtitled. It’s clear where the issues arise now…

[Scott_M]

Rob Draper, who despite working for the Mail and coming across as something of a wet blanket, article today…

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10885413/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Liverpool-fans-memory-Hillsborough-stopped-disaster-Paris.html

[VladimirIlyich]

48 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

Rob Draper, who despite working for the Mail and coming across as something of a wet blanket, article today…

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10885413/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Liverpool-fans-memory-Hillsborough-stopped-disaster-Paris.html

I had no idea they were staging the Olympics there. This is a good opportunity to prevent that happening as that loss of revenue is the only kind of way of hitting home how much of a fuck up it was.

[Arniepie]

1 hour ago, Scott_M said:

Rob Draper, who despite working for the Mail and coming across as something of a wet blanket, article today…

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10885413/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Liverpool-fans-memory-Hillsborough-stopped-disaster-Paris.html

Like stronts said I think,the mail have discovered someone the hate more than scousers. 

The comments section being completely unsurprisingly. 

Fella yesterday was saying he has been on social media last week and is staggered at the biile and invective which the city is subject too.

[dockers_strike]

The bottleneck I was caught in at the Stade de France last Saturday is the one that would eventually trap Liverpool fans outside the ramp by Gate X, meaning by the time they got through the chaos of the random security check, it would be impossible for them to get inside the stadium less than 100 metres away.

 

In those minutes, my colleagues and I were stuck in a large, anxious crowd and all eyes were all fixed on one point. That was the line of security guards who controlled access to the concourses we needed to reach and, in a more figurative way, dictated the mood of the crowd.

 

The truth, as inescapable as the throng of bodies packed together in the evening sun, was that security and the police behind them did not know what they were doing. You did not need to have attended football matches for 30 years to see it. They were in chaos.

 

Whatever the Uefa review discovers in the months ahead, the hope is that it will officially acknowledge this above all: the crowd stayed calm. In doing so they saved the day. Informally, the governing body knows that it escaped a much worse outcome.

 

Watching from the stadium control centre in the build-up to kick-off, its officials could see that the French had fouled it up. On street level, one could see it in the faces of the suited officials who waited helplessly behind the security checks.

Advertisement

 

The system was broken and so what it came down to was the behaviour of the crowd. A crowd which was not to know that many of them would later be locked out, in parts teargassed and even targeted by criminal gangs. That was the second part of the Stade de France catastrophe. The first part unfolded in the hours before kick-off and I know that because for a time I was there.

 

It has been some small consolation this week to see that the truth has been swifter than usual to don its trousers and get out in pursuit of the lie. The early attempts at a cover-up by French Interior minister Gérald Darmanin have gone into reverse.

 

The 40,000 fake tickets conspiracy has disappeared like a child’s fantasy. French president Emmanuel Macron’s sympathetic remarks have signalled a more conciliatory approach from the French authorities. They are beginning to realise, as Uefa did on the night, that they got away with one.

 

The strange part is that it has still been a challenge to convince some people that this was a bad experience only prevented from being much worse by fans: Liverpool fans, Real Madrid fans. The notion of what some people think happened, fuelled by fragments of the night caught on video co-opted into a false narrative, has been striking. The simplest way to explain to the sceptical has been to say: this is what I saw.

Advertisement

 

First of all, that bottleneck I was caught in was unremarkable in its composition. Which is to say it was mainly people like me: middle-aged men who like football. There were many women too and the occasional child. An Irish Liverpool fan crammed in my personal space by dint of pure necessity made conversation in the interests of politeness. He told me he had seen it before at the Stade de France watching rugby. That observation first put the idea in my head that this was not a one-off.

 

We all nurtured a gnawing sense that this was a bad situation, and that behind us, on the walk parallel to the A1 motorway that runs to the west of the stadium there would be bigger crowds growing. What would happen if they pushed forward? Yet no-one panicked, and no-one wanted to let themselves down. There was barely a cross word spoken. There was no surge.

iverpool fans in a bottleneck by the A1 underpass Credit: TWTTER

Ahead of me a bemused hospitality guest in a blue blazer waved the little laminated pass on a cord around his neck as if it might magically see him plucked out of this anxious throng. People made way for parents with children. There were some accusations that a man leaning on the wall by the ramp was trying to steal tickets, but those who got through were just too worried about friends to make a scene.

Advertisement

 

There was no designated exit route for removing people judged to have counterfeit tickets. They were just thrust back into the crowd. The security guard closest to me was soaked, with his sweat and that of those whom he allowed to squeeze past. He looked like he wanted to tear off his high-vis jacket and go home.

 

Just behind my colleague, Jason Burt, I finally reached the security line at around 7.15pm. The official Uefa media accreditation lanyards usually work like magic around a stadium. One glance and you get waved through. But here it seemed just as useless as everyone else’s credentials.

 

A man in a suit was summoned to approve me. The security guard I had watched for the last hour was so distracted that he kept hold of my lanyard while we waited, distractedly pulling on it while he dealt with others, tipping my head towards him like a reluctant Labrador refusing his walk.

 

Somewhere in the jam we lost our colleague Chris Bascombe but he made it through and we were reunited at the media gate. It was around 7.20pm.

Advertisement

 

Only in the following hour, as it became clear that the problem was getting worse, did we compile the first story of the night, and it grew from there. Our initial assumption was that we had seen the problems at the worst point and things would improve. Besides, there are whole concertos played on tiny violins for football reporters who complain about hassle getting into big matches. But worse it got.

 

For those who were locked out, teargassed, manhandled, robbed, a very fundamental sense of humiliation. An investment – financial and emotional – in attending an event like a Champions League final collapsing in the starkest terms. They have my sympathy. My experience was just a fraction of that, but I do know what I saw. The crowd behaved itself. The system failed.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/06/05/uefa-got-away-thanks-fans-staying-calm-system-paris-failed/#comment

[TheHowieLama]

UEFA continuing it's stellar leadership:

 

Hungary's closed door game played in front of a lively home crowd chock full of kids who then boo the taking of the knee.

 

 

[Raymond Duck]

6 hours ago, Scott_M said:

It’s in French but subtitled. It’s clear where the issues arise now…

We make an appearance in this one. The signage definitely sent people the wrong way, the tunnel area was a nightmare.

 

They completely abandoned ticket checking, in fact we never had our ticket checked once apart from a casual glance when we finally got in. 

[Barrington Womble]

45 minutes ago, paddyberger said:

We make an appearance in this one. The signage definitely sent people the wrong way, the tunnel area was a nightmare.

 

They completely abandoned ticket checking, in fact we never had our ticket checked once apart from a casual glance when we finally got in. 

When i read some of these reports I feel lucky - it was shit for us, but clearly not as shit as most people. I don't know if that's because we came a little later (we arrived at 7.30) or because we arrived on the RER B, which it seems most people avoided because they thought it was closed.

 

Either way, it gets more astonishing how these french cunts are still trying to carry the lie of 40k ticketless holiigans. The mountain of evidence seems to be there for the whole media and these fuckers have the advantage of CCTV to review too, yet they're persisting with this nonsense. You wonder why the French entertain the idea of Le Penn, but these fuckers make it easy to see why. 

[Raymond Duck]

6 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

When i read some of these reports I feel lucky - it was shit for us, but clearly not as shit as most people. I don't know if that's because we came a little later (we arrived at 7.30) or because we arrived on the RER B, which it seems most people avoided because they thought it was closed.

 

Either way, it gets more astonishing how these french cunts are still trying to carry the lie of 40k ticketless holiigans. The mountain of evidence seems to be there for the whole media and these fuckers have the advantage of CCTV to review too, yet they're persisting with this nonsense. You wonder why the French entertain the idea of Le Penn, but these fuckers make it easy to see why. 

We were planning on B but kept getting encouraged to go for D by everyone on the platform even though B was waiting on the platform opposite. 
 

We ended up on D and got to St Denis about 5.15 and should have been ample time for a couple of pints and stroll to the stadium. 
 

We completely avoided the underpass on the way out, that’s about the only consolation I’ll take from going in that way. No way were we heading back though that again. 

[Scott_M]

1 hour ago, paddyberger said:

We make an appearance in this one. The signage definitely sent people the wrong way, the tunnel area was a nightmare.

 

They completely abandoned ticket checking, in fact we never had our ticket checked once apart from a casual glance when we finally got in. 

 

Send supporters on the alternative train line but then don’t change the resource at the stadium to ensure it’s properly staffed for supporters coming in different entrances.
 

Signs send supporters the wrong way and nobody fixes it or assists supporters in going the right way.

 

Absolutely no communication to supporters about where ticket checks will be or what was happening at the ground / game being delayed. 

 

It all just reads like the most basic of errors. It’s genuinely unbelievable. I can only assume Inspector Jacques Clouseau was in charge of this operation.

[Barrington Womble]

1 hour ago, paddyberger said:

We were planning on B but kept getting encouraged to go for D by everyone on the platform even though B was waiting on the platform opposite. 
 

We ended up on D and got to St Denis about 5.15 and should have been ample time for a couple of pints and stroll to the stadium. 
 

We completely avoided the underpass on the way out, that’s about the only consolation I’ll take from going in that way. No way were we heading back though that again. 

We just kept an eye on the RER B all day - we were based at St Michel through the day, so that was always our plan. It seems it didn't run south of where we were and there were parts of the day they were a little irregular, but we made a call as it wasn't mental at St Michel and we figured most people would join at Gare du Nord (between us and St Denis) that we'd be ok, which luckily was right. 

 

I won't be going back to France, let alone Stade de France. They can fuck off now. 

[Turkish Delight]

The signage piece is an important one to highlight in terms of planning failure.

 

I got off train line D at around 7 but had to check into my hotel at the other side of the stadium so went straight on as everyone went left. After checking in I have a video on my phone at 7:37 of the team bus as it went past us about 200 metres from the ground as we were walking towards it and a photo at my seat at 7:46.

 

We entered by gate A which was virtually empty at that point. My only real observation at the time was how quiet it was as I was completely oblivious of the problems elsewhere.

 

A mate who went to the stadium ahead of us only made it in around 90 minutes after us after following the route everyone else did.

 

Some simple directions highlighting routes to different gates could have split the load across the entry points.

[Barrington Womble]

9 minutes ago, Turkish Delight said:

The signage piece is an important one to highlight in terms of planning failure.

 

I got off train line D at around 7 but had to check into my hotel at the other side of the stadium so went straight on as everyone went left. After checking in I have a video on my phone at 7:37 of the team bus as it went past us about 200 metres from the ground as we were walking towards it and a photo at my seat at 7:46.

 

We entered by gate A which was virtually empty at that point. My only real observation at the time was how quiet it was as I was completely oblivious of the problems elsewhere.

 

A mate who went to the stadium ahead of us only made it in around 90 minutes after us after following the route everyone else did.

 

Some simple directions highlighting routes to different gates could have split the load across the entry points.

I had no issue with signs, but mostly because I followed the person in front and it was easy from RER B. It's amazing you got in so easily. We were also gate A and got off the RER B at 7.30 and at the gate at 8 (due to the 1st ticket check) and it was fucking chaos as they'd just shut the gate and only one turnstile was left open. 

[Turkish Delight]

12 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

I had no issue with signs, but mostly because I followed the person in front and it was easy from RER B. It's amazing you got in so easily. We were also gate A and got off the RER B at 7.30 and at the gate at 8 (due to the 1st ticket check) and it was fucking chaos as they'd just shut the gate and only one turnstile was left open. 

I think we were just exceptionally lucky to have got there at the point we did.

 

If we hadn't been staying where we were then we'd have definitely followed the route everyone else did from line D.

 

I know the gate was shut not long after we arrived. We were worried about our mate as we couldn't reach him on the phone and heard what was happening from other fans. I went to the concourse and could see the chaos below.

[an tha]

Peter Moore weighing in...

 

https://www.thisisanfield.com/2022/06/ex-liverpool-chief-on-dystopian-paris-experience-they-created-their-own-violence/amp/

[m0e]

47 minutes ago, an tha said:

Peter Moore weighing in...

 

https://www.thisisanfield.com/2022/06/ex-liverpool-chief-on-dystopian-paris-experience-they-created-their-own-violence/amp/

I saw him walking out the ground, the greenhouse loving knob.

[sir roger]

7 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

UEFA continuing it's stellar leadership:

 

Hungary's closed door game played in front of a lively home crowd chock full of kids who then boo the taking of the knee.

 

 

And as they legally had to be accompanied by an adult all of their parents were there too.

[Scott_M]

I was off all last week, my first day back in work today. 
 

Speaking to lads in our Chester office, loads more stories of gassing. One lad even had to fight off a street rat at the gate to stop him taking his ticket out his hand. 

[Harry Squatter]

Apparently one old fella from my work who has mobility issues was teargassed at the stadium and then after the game was beaten up by the locals, got his phone and wallet robbed.

 

He's been to every final since 1977 and has told people he's never going yo a European away game again. 

[Vincent Vega]

This podcast is well worth a listen. It’s with Rob Harris from Associated Press, Tariq Panja from The New York Times, Martyn Ziegler from The Times and a guy called Ronan Evain from Football Supporters Europe. The input from Evain is especially interesting. The CL stuff is the first half hour of the pod. I had no idea that the police were confiscating supporters sunglasses and AirPods, what the fuck is that about?

 

[Barrington Womble]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/06/french-police-politicians-lied-and-smeared-uk-football-fans-champions-league-final?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

 

 

[Vincent Vega]

54 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/06/french-police-politicians-lied-and-smeared-uk-football-fans-champions-league-final?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

 

 

Of course French police and politicians lied and smeared UK football fans. That’s what they do

Fabrice Arfi

 

In France, the violence meted out at the Champions League final and the cover-up that followed were tragically familiar

 

There is a proverb in French: “A quelque chose malheur est bon.” It roughly equates to “Every cloud has a silver lining.” In that sense – and I mean no offence, above all, not to Liverpool supporters – I think something positive emerged from the fiasco of the Champions League final in Paris on 28 May, when the club’s fans were unfairly blamed for chaotic and terrifying scenes outside the Stade de France.

 

It is that the world finally knows that there exists a country where people who cause no trouble – including children who had simply come to watch their idols play football – can be teargassed and abused by police for no justifiable reason. A country where those exercising the highest political office are able to peddle absolute nonsense in an attempt to extricate themselves from the controversy, without fear of consequence. That country is mine, France.

 

At last, amid continuing outrage, with British and Spanish officials and politicians, and thousands of fans and families, still calling for apologies and explanations, the world can perhaps understand what we French journalists have been trying to document for several years, most notably since Emmanuel Macron arrived in office in 2017. Here are but a few examples.

 

On 1 December 2018 in Marseille, 80-year-old Zineb Redouane was struck in the head by a teargas grenade when she went to shutter a window in her fourth-floor flat because of a demonstration taking place in the street below. Video images pointed to the firing of that grenade by a police officer. She died the next day in hospital. The police never identified the officer who fired the grenade, and the government did nothing.

 

On 23 March 2019, in Nice, 73-year-old Geneviève Legay, a feminist and anti-capitalist activist, was peacefully taking part in a demonstration against Macron and his government. When a police charge caused her to fall, she suffered serious head injuries, including bleeding on the brain. “This woman had had no contact with the forces of law and order,” declared Macron two days later. With contempt, he added: “I wish her a swift recovery and, perhaps, a sort of wisdom.” He had lied – a judicial investigation established she was indeed a victim of the police action. For having revealed details of the case, a journalist with the investigative team I co-lead at Mediapart was summoned for questioning by police. Again, the government did nothing.

 

On 21 June 2019 in Nantes, Steve Maia Caniço, 24, joined a dance party on a quay beside the River Loire during France’s yearly music festivities, the Fête de la musique. During the night, the police violently attempted to disperse the partygoers, causing 14 of them to fall into the river. The body of Maia Caniço was discovered in the water one month later and the initial police report concluded his death was unrelated to the police charge. A judicial investigation has since found to the contrary. The government, again, did nothing.

 

I could also mention how police forced a group of school pupils protesting about education reforms to kneel on the ground with hands behind their heads like prisoners of war, or incidents of police hitting firefighters during a demonstration over working conditions, and dragging protesting nurses along the ground. Not forgetting the 30 people who lost an eye, and six others who lost a hand, during the “yellow vest” protests – and all those times when the government did and said nothing.

 

But when it does say something, this is what it sounds like. In March 2019, Macron, apparently inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, said: “Don’t talk about police repression and violence, such words are unacceptable in a state of law.”

 

In February 2020, Macron’s then interior minister, Christophe Castaner, infamous for having once falsely claimed that May Day demonstrators “attacked” a Paris hospital, declared: “I like order in this country and I defend the police … And in my words there are no ‘buts’. I defend them, and that’s all.”

 

And what can be said of the comment by Castaner’s successor, Gérald Darmanin, who blamed the Champions League disturbances on “industrial-scale” ticket fraud and said more than 30-40,000 Liverpool fans had fake tickets or no tickets outside the stadium.

 

Speaking before parliament in July 2020, Darmanin pronounced: “When I hear talk of police violence, I choke.” The remark was particularly cynical, made just two months after the death of George Floyd in the US after his neck was compressed by a police officer, and six months after the death in Paris of deliveryman Cédric Chouviat who, in a roadside police check that got out of hand, cried out “I’m suffocating” seven times to officers lying on top of him.

 

The message I want to send here is that behind the loud controversy that continues to surround the Champions League final, the violence and the near disaster, lies the silence of a familiar, practised French strategy. It ensures wrongdoing is never punished, and police offenders are never brought to book.

• Fabrice Arfi is a French journalist with co-responsiblity for investigations at the website Mediapart