‘Absolutely horrific’: Liverpool fans on the Champions League final chaos

Liverpool fans have raised concerns about their treatment by French police and the dangerous overcrowding that ensued before the Champions League final on Saturday night in Paris.

Three Liverpool supporters who were at the match share their experiences of being caught up in the chaos outside the Stade de France.

We travelled to the game via the RER train service and disembarked at the La Plaine Stade de France station at approximately 6.45pm local time, more than two hours before the scheduled kick-off time of 9pm. Road signs indicated it was a 15-minute walk. As we approached the motorway which runs adjacent to the stadium, police funnelled us into an underpass beside the road.

This underpass was approximately 10 metres wide with police vehicles lined up along the way, meaning the gap afforded to the fans was half as wide as it should’ve been. Very soon after it became extremely crowded. The police had initially stopped fans walking on the road but some climbed over a waist-high fence to get back on as it was becoming extremely crowded. My two friends and I did this also.

We walked for approximately 100 metres down the road and noticed that in order to get through the necessary security check for the stadium you had to be on the underpass. We therefore moved back on to the underpass. At this section of the road there was no police presence. This is when things began to get uncomfortable as it was no longer just a crowded space. The only way I can describe this is: I was not in control of when I moved, I was being moved along by the pressure of fans from behind me. There were also hundreds of local youths among the crowd.

The initial security check was situated at the bottom of a small ramp up towards the stadium. By the