Heartbreaking testimonies of the Champions League final in Paris, one year later

On May 28, 2022, John Marquis is about to have a great day. His daughter Fiona tells him that she is pregnant and they both go to Paris to see the final of Champions League from 2022 in between Liverpool and real Madrid. But a year later, the die-hard Liverpool fan, who flew in from Guernsey, recalls that sunny Saturday as “a terrible experience” which “changed my life”.

Three hours before the game, “when Fiona and I got off the subway, we both knew something was wrong,” the then-63-year-old, who is used to big football matches, told AFP and had never been able to enter the stadium despite your valid ticket.

“It was after half an hour that things got really bad,” he said. He remembers the tear gas and batons of the police, overpowered, as well as the movement of the people. “I felt the crack of a baton go past my skull by a few millimeters.” Like many Reds fans, John Marquis drew parallels between the riot at the Stade de France and the tragedy at Hillsborough in 1989, when an avalanche from the crowd claimed the lives of 97 supporters.

John Marquis was not in the stadium that day but for him it was “only the Hillsborough experience that prevented the deaths in Paris on May 28”: “UEFA and the French police let us down,” he accused. UEFA and French authorities initially targeted the English fans, accusing them of arriving late and submitting the wrong tickets. An independent investigation later clarified these allegations, denouncing UEFA’s “primary responsibility” as well as the police’s “misconceptions”.

Victim of post-traumatic stress, John Marquis no longer has the “strength” to watch the games of his favorite team. “I can’t sleep, I have panic attacks, I handle crowds badly,” he lists. Testimonials of the same kind, Peter Scarfe has heard dozens. This Hillsborough survivor was on TV on May 28. “A lot of people (in Paris) were at Hillsborough in 1989 and obviously raised concerns.”

According to him, there was a lack of debugging responsibilities. “What we didn’t have 34 years ago was the recognition of responsibility. The fans want the world to recognize that big mistakes were made that could have cost lives.” “No one seems to learn from mistakes,” he lamented, calling the idea that the Stade de France could host the Rugby World Cup in the fall or the Olympic Games next year “scary.”

white nightmare

Real Madrid fans also continue to have nightmares. “I went to eight finals with Real. This was obviously the worst of all,” said David Caballos, vice president of Real Madrid’s ‘Paris 2000’ group, who found his rental van with a broken window after the game.

“We went to Amsterdam, Cardiff, Glasgow, Lisbon… and twice to Paris, in 2000 and in 2022. Nowhere else have we seen so much insecurity and such a poorly organized final,” added of the 49-year-old fan. “The police started charging. One of the police turned to us because his eyes were full of tear gas. We had to help him,” recalled Gerardo Tocino, president of the ‘La Gran Familia’ club, one of the most important in Real Madrid. Madrid.

‘Tonin el Torero’, whose real name is Antonio Castaño, is one of the most famous fans of the Merengue club, always in the first row of the Bernabéu stand with a cape. He was also at the Stade de France. “The area around Saint-Denis has fallen into complete chaos. Organized gangs are trying to rob people, people are running, it’s dark, there are no public lights, car windows are blown out …”, he described.

Gerardo Bacon took it more philosophically. “The organization doesn’t seem too bad to me, really. You don’t have to be obsessed with that. These are events that no one thought of,” estimates the former retired sports teacher. But ‘Tonin the Bullfighter’ replied that the Games were near and “France is in trouble if the tests are in Saint-Denis.”