French minister cites fake tickets for Champions League final chaos

France's sports minister has blamed fans without tickets for the chaos ahead of Saturday's Champions League final.

Amelie Oudea-Castera has accused fans with fake tickets for causing the problems in Paris.

French police used pepper spray and tear gas at Liverpool supporters ahead of their 1-0 defeat to Real Madrid at the Stade de France.

"What happened, first of all, was this mass gathering of the British supporters of the Liverpool club, without tickets, or with fake tickets," Oudea-Castera told French radio station RTL.

"A certain number of youths from the nearby area who were present tried to get in by mixing in with the crowd.

"The major point is to try to understand precisely what happened during this massive fraud," she said.

"There are witnesses and the figures corroborate this, 30,000-40,000 people without tickets or with fake tickets and we saw some fake tickets.

"We can see they are professional and that's meant some controls didn't notice it.

"We want there to be a very detailed, in-depth inquiry with UEFA.

"We are waiting for the rapid setting off of this inquiry."

The local authorities, police and final organisers were due to meet this morning to review events outside the stadium during which Liverpool fans queueing for admission were tear-gassed.

The move comes amid concerted calls for an investigation from British MPs amid condemnation of the way the Premier League club's supporters were treated, with local authorities claiming long delays were caused by some trying to gain entry using "fake" tickets.

Ian Byrne, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby, attended the match in Paris and said he had never witnessed such scenes since the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. He has written to British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss with