French interior minister accused of lying over Champions League chaos

Gerald Darmanin came under pressure on Wednesday over the chaos that marred the Champions League final at the weekend between Liverpool and Real Madrid which he has blamed on ticket scams. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused him of lying and said he should resign after he defended the French police and blamed ticket counterfeiting, disorganised supporters and unruly behaviour by English fans for the crushes.

"The facts are extremely serious and the lie by the minister is extremely serious," Le Pen told France 2 television. "In any other democracy, faced with such a fiasco, with chaos that occurred in front of 400 million people watching on television, which offered a dreadful image of France, then he should consider himself that he should resign," she added.

Darmanin gave a televised press conference on Monday, two days after the final which was delayed because thousands of Liverpool supporters were unable to enter the stadium, many of them suffering teargas, pepper spray and crushes on the way in. The 39-year-old blamed "massive, industrial-scale and organised fraud in fake tickets" and said that 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool fans had turned up at the stadium either without tickets or with counterfeited tickets.

He also claimed that at some check-points outside the Stade de France as many as 70 percent of tickets were found to be fraudulent by staff. But sources within UEFA and the French football federation told AFP on Tuesday that only 2,800 fake tickets were detected at the final, suggesting the problem was more about managing flows of ticketless fans around the stadium.