Outrage as report on Paris final policing links Hillsborough with hooliganism

The French authorities deployed riot police in large numbers at the Champions League final in Paris apparently due to a misconceived association of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster with hooliganism, according to an official report produced for France’s prime minister.

The report by Michel Cadot, the French sports ministry’s delegate on major sporting events, appears to confirm many Liverpool supporters’ bleakest assumptions at the final, that the heavy-handed policing they suffered, including being teargassed, was informed by prejudice about their likely behaviour.

Cadot’s 30-page report, delivered on Friday to the office of the French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, refers to Hillsborough in a section on police intelligence before the final on 28 May between Liverpool and Real Madrid. The section recognises first that Liverpool supporters have not been known for violence at matches. However, it then continues: “Reference to the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 – 97 deaths – for which the responsibility of the [police] was pointed out, led however to the drawing up of a firm policing arrangement, to maintain order in riot gear, in order to be able to respond to a risk of collective phenomena of hooliganism and havoc, as had happened in Marseilles on 13 June 2016 during the England-Russia game.”

Bereaved Hillsborough families reacted with outrage and dismay to the report’s association of the disaster, at the 1989 FA Cup semi final, with hooliganism, and the revelation that despite all the changes in football during the 33 years since, it was apparently still informing police perceptions and behaviour.

After a 27-year campaign by bereaved families and survivors to legally establish the truth of how the disaster was caused, an