For Ronan Evain, general manager of the Football Supporters Europe association, it is necessary in particular to review “the mobility plan around the Stade de France” before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
“We came very close to a major disaster”, estimated Ronan Evain, guest of franceinfo Tuesday, February 14. The chief executive of Football Supporters Europe is one of nine co-authors of the independent report commissioned by UEFA, following the incidents at the Stade de France during the 2022 Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool .
“If we escaped this major disaster, it was not thanks to the responsiveness of the police”but thanks to the supporters “who have demonstrated a collective ability to self-regulate to avoid the worst”, he explained. As France prepares to host the Rugby World Cup in September and the Olympics in Paris in 2024, the findings of this report “is an extremely serious red flag”warns the representative of supporters.
franceinfo: Why do you first point to UEFA’s responsibility?
Ronan Evain: It’s their event and UEFA, in theory, has some form of control or oversight over the whole organization, which hasn’t been the case at the Stade de France. Nevertheless, UEFA is making an exercise in transparency and accountability with the publication of this report. She is primarily responsible for this fiasco, but that in no way exonerates the French public authorities, who also bear a heavy responsibility.
Did the prefecture of police and law enforcement overestimate the risk of hooliganism?
Indeed, it is the fantasized hooligan threat based on the culture of the English stands more than 30 years ago or the events in Marseille in 2016 during England-Russia. Two elements which had absolutely nothing to do with the people present at the Stade de France on May 28, 2022, but which guided the police approach and which led to this consideration that it was necessary to supervise the supporters present in Paris that day. there and not welcome them. Everything else stems from this flawed approach to supporterism.
Does that explain the disproportionate use of force?
This first explains the absence of a culture of hospitality. For the English and Spanish supporters who arrived at the Stade de France on the day of the final, their only interlocutors were police or riot police. Nobody to welcome them, nobody to speak to them in their language, to show them the direction of the stadium, only a police response. This perception of the supporter as being the enemy leads to the presence of helmeted riot police. There is the excessive and dangerous use of tear gas around the Stade de France.
How many English supporters were present that evening with counterfeit tickets?
We found no trace of the 30 to 40,000 English supporters without tickets or with falsified tickets mentioned by Mr. Darmanin. No trace of the massive fraud mentioned by the Minister of the Interior. There was some fraud, but it was really marginal. We are talking about just over 2,000 QR codes that have been scanned several times. That’s the only number we have. But that does not necessarily mean that all of these QR codes were falsified, since there is also a technical failure of the Stade de France terminals which may explain that a QR code has been scanned several times. We are probably around 300 to 400 counterfeit notes, which is rather a low figure for this type of event. We were unable, with all the documents that were sent to us, with all the interviews that were done, to find traces of the 30 to 40,000 English supporters mentioned by the minister.
Do you know how many people were assaulted that night?
It is difficult to quantify. When you’re abroad, you’ve been mugged, the first thing you want to do is go home. It’s not to go to the police station to file a complaint. We end up with very few complaints. It is clearly part of the things to analyze on what happened at the Stade de France and the necessary feedback that must be done today. The problems that led to the Stade de France fiasco are old. They were clearly identified on previous events, but there was never a response from the organizers. We can see the difficulty of public authorities and French sports authorities in reporting on experience and learning from their mistakes.
Did we escape the worst during this final?
We came very close to a major disaster. This is the conclusion of this report. If we escaped these major disasters, it is not thanks to the responsiveness of the police, but it is thanks to that of the supporters present before and after the match who demonstrated a collective ability to self-regulate. to avoid the worst. We had a lot of self-satisfaction after the match, which was based in particular on the fact that there were no deaths at the Stade de France during this Champions League final. It seemed to me at the time quite indecent. When you go to an event of this type, you can still hope to return home. Yes, we have come very close to the worst.
Does France have the capacity to organize the next Rugby World Cup and the Olympic Games in 2024?
This is an extremely serious warning signal. The public authorities, Ministry of the Interior, Paris police headquarters, must now take up this report and review their approach to welcoming spectators. Otherwise, we can head for a reproduction of all or part of what we saw around the Stade de France. Questions of mobility and access around the Stade de France are extremely old. We lack this culture of transparency or accountability. We lack a culture of feedback around these events. It is urgent to review in particular the mobility plan around the Stade de France. Finally, there is a specificity of football. That is to say that we do not welcome football supporters who are perceived as enemies, like supporters of other sports. It is also our capacity to organize football matches in France which must be reviewed.
