French football official says stadium security film of Liverpool fans was deleted

CCTV footage from the Stade de France on the night of the Champions League final has already been deleted, an official from the French Football Federation has said.

French authorities blamed Liverpool fans for the chaos outside the ground before the 1-0 defeat to Real Madrid, during which thousands of supporters were locked out then hit by police with tear-gas.

Ticketless supporters or those with forgeries have been blamed for trying to enter the stadium by France’s Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

But there have been many eyewitness accounts of major congestion problems on the approach to the stadium and patient fans being locked out for almost an hour as the problems with scanning tickets intensified.

After the match, local gangs assaulted and robbed supporters making their way back to coaches and trains.

But there is no video evidence to corroborate this as it has already been destroyed because of an apparent failure by officials to request copies.

“The images are available for seven days. They are then automatically destroyed,” Erwan Le Prevost, director of institutional relations at the FFF, told a French Senate hearing looking into events.

“We should have had a requisition to provide them to the different populations [organisations]. The images are extremely violent.”

Thousands of Liverpool supporters in a fan zone in Paris, ahead of the Champions League Final at the Stade de France against Real Madrid. PA

President of the Senate law commission, Francois-Noel Buffet, said that if authorities had not properly asked for CCTV to be kept it “would be a serious problem from our point of view”.

Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram said the missing footage was just another similarity