Why simple maths proves French ministers’ blame of Liverpool fans cannot be true

The row over responsibility for the dangerous and violent chaos at the Champions League final at the Stade de France between Liverpool and Real Madrid on Saturday night is continuing, with senior French government figures doubling down on their blame of Liverpool supporters.

Reds’ fans including women, children, and the elderly were struck with riot shields by French military police officers, confronted with tear gas as they attempted to avoid a terrifying crush, and left to fend for themselves after full-time against a significant number of armed local youths.

Supporters combined masses of video evidence documenting the carnage, proving that they arrived way ahead of kick-off and demonstrating that the original claim from European governing body UEFA and the French authorities that fans caused havoc via ‘late arrivals’ was simply untrue.

By the end of Saturday night the French state had switched its excuse, opting instead to blame tens of thousands of ‘ticketless’ fans for arriving at the match and attacking police officers and stewards. On Monday, the minister of the interior Gérald Darmanin and minister for sport Amélie Oudéa-Castéra repeated their outlandish claims, and attempted to diminish their own responsibility for events by listing some pretty unbelievable numbers.

‘There was massive fraud to an industrial level and organisation of fake tickets because the pre-filtering by the Stade de France and the French football federation saw that 70 per cent of tickets were fake,’ Darmanin said.

‘Once through the pre-filtering stage, 15 per cent of tickets were fake, more than 2,600 were non-validated tickets even though they’d gone through the first filtering.

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