Uefa's organisation of Champions League final a failure, panel finds

The organisation of May's Champions League last by European football's ruling assemblage Uefa was "an abject failure", a sheet of experts has said.

Fans were robbed and tear-gassed extracurricular Liverpool and Real Madrid's crippled astatine Paris's Stade de France and kick-off was delayed by 36 minutes.

Organisers initially blamed fake tickets and supporters, but their claims drew wide criticism.

Uefa said it would not remark until its ain enquiry concludes successful November.

Experts told BBC Panorama that fans' calm effect was the main crushed wherefore overcrowding extracurricular the stadium had not resulted successful fatalities.

The sheet said fans were "held for respective hours successful a bottleneck" adjacent the stadium, earlier uncovering themselves "again successful static queues astatine malfunctioning turnstiles".

"On leaving the stadium, they were attacked astatine knife-point by gangs who stole their possessions," they added.

Their study recovered determination had been:

The sheet added that determination had been an "abject nonaccomplishment by Uefa successful gathering its responsibilities".

The Paris constabulary did not respond to a petition for remark from BBC Panorama, but person antecedently said they regret utilizing teardrop state against susceptible radical oregon those who did not origin trouble.

They person besides said they regret the failures extracurricular the stadium aft the match.

Uefa issued an apology to some Liverpool and Real Madrid fans successful June and has commissioned its ain autarkic reappraisal into the event.

The study said that earlier the game, astir 15,000 Liverpool supporters were caught successful a bottleneck adjacent an underpass, aft a determination to instrumentality down signage meant fans were lone directed down 1 way to the stadium.

The sheet recovered that arsenic the build-up extracurricular the Stade de France became progressively dangerous, a summons checkpoint was removed, releasing fans connected to the concourse, but lawsuit organisers had unopen immoderate stadium gates to power the situation, which had been exacerbated by hundreds of section radical trying to participate without tickets.

French authorities utilized teardrop gas, with children, aged and disabled radical caught up successful the chaos, and riot constabulary were deployed, contempt Merseyside Police's pre-match quality study stating that Liverpool fans were well-behaved successful Europe and did not admit the usage of heavy-handed policing.

BBC Panorama analysed much than 300 videos recorded by fans, which showed thousands of supporters successful tightly-packed crowds extracurricular the stadium encouraging each different to enactment calm and to backmost up.

Maxwell Pearce, aged 11, said helium thought helium was "going to die" aft being tear-gassed and described however others encouraged him to get connected the crushed and clasp his scarf implicit his look truthful helium could breathe.

Grace Merritt, aged 19, said she felt similar she "couldn't respire due to the fact that my ribs were successful truthful overmuch symptom and I was thinking: 'Oh my god, thing could ace here, thing could beryllium broken'."

The fan, who was astatine the crippled with her younger brother, received infirmary attraction erstwhile she returned to Liverpool.

Dan Austin, who was caught successful the underpass bottleneck, said consciousness of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, wherever a stadium crush led to the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans, "meant that everybody knew what to do".

He added that Liverpool supporters had "been done that earlier and… everybody, adjacent radical similar maine who were not live astatine the clip erstwhile it happened, has that benignant of corporate and section representation of what happened instilled successful you from increasing up".

In July, a French enquiry recovered the chaos was caused by administrative errors and that authorities had blamed Liverpool fans unfairly.

Prof Scraton said determination had been superior failings by the event's organisers Uefa, adding that the organisation had the "overarching work to get it close [and to] attraction for those radical who are putting their hands successful their pockets and coming into those matches".