Inquiry blames UEFA for Champions League final fiasco and credits Liverpool fans with saving lives

UEFA was responsible for the Champions League final fiasco in Paris last May, while Liverpool supporters were ‘instrumental’ in saving lives on the night, an official inquiry commissioned by the European football governing body has found.

A panel of experts including politicians, academics and lawyers was set up by UEFA itself last summer to investigate the chaotic scenes at the Stade de France, where Liverpool fans including women, children and the disabled were tear gassed by riot police, mugged by armed gangs of local youths, and kettled into dangerous crushes as they tried to enter the stadium to access European football’s showpiece fixture.

The group has now finalised it conclusions which lay the blame firmly at UEFA’s door, with its report saying that the organisation’s pre-match planning was based on an ‘absence of overall control or oversight of safety and security.’ The report has been leaked to some media in advance of its official publication.

The findings of the 158-page report reveal that senior figures at UEFA were aware that the organisation was ignoring its own safety and security policies in the build-up to the match, but did not act to rectify the situation, throwing into serious doubt the positions of key members of its hierarchy including President Aleksander Ceferin.

‘UEFA’s lack of oversight upon delegation of private safety and security matters, deference of all such matters in the public space to policing authorities, and simply not following its own safety, security and service requirements, was a recipe for the failures which occurred,’ the panel found. ‘Senior officials at the top of UEFA allowed this to happen, even though the shortcomings of its model were widely known at senior management