The second one is even more obvious imo. The notion that these decisions "balance themselves out" over a season is shown to be farcical when it comes to one-off games. How does losing revenue in the region of £170m due to incompetent officials "balance itself out"?
It takes quite an incident to get me on the side of Liverpool supporters. But it seems to have happened. I was worried about what I was hearing when all this first started coming out during the game and particularly what I was hearing in the few hours after. I think the evidence is becoming unequivocal now. This was a major **** up by the "organisers" and the police, and if anything the supporters need praise for not kicking back more than they did. What we need now is more evidence and I think it's out there if people are prepared to look (which of course they weren't after Hillsborough). People with legitimate tickets that didn't get in for example. Also there's an assumption of the aggressive and animal nature of supporters, but I think you'll find that there were people caught up in this with reputation that can't be sullied by assumption. There's already signs of massively poor organisation, such as lack of checking and control before they arrived at the gates. I say gates but I think there was only one section dedicated to Liverpool entry which has got to be wrong, plus no response that after this started to open up others. It's as if the authorities were surprised that more people are around without tickets (if indeed there were), but it's their job to plan for such things. But lets hear the proper evidence. It might even be that the turnstiles stopped working properly and stopped allowing anyone in. We need to know. I wonder what UEFA will do? Their first step was obviously to blame the fans, but if that doesn't work surely they'll just throw the organisers under the bus to save themselves. Let us see. But whatever happens there's far more to this than some of you have been suggesting.
French football seems to have a real and serious problem with this sort of behaviour atm. But it is a growing concern across the sport as we've seen many time over here too. There are lots of theories doing the rounds explaining how and why this rise in fan unrest is suddenly rearing it's ugly head and things look like they might regress to the dark ages of hooliganism. Even Gareth Waistcoat opined that it was a reflection of 'where society is at'. Plenty blame cabin fever caused by COVID. I partially agree with that theory. But I would suggest that what we are seeing is a low level 'revolution' as football's working class roots rise up against the sport's upper class aspirations and vent their frustration through these actions. What Covid and the current cost of living crisis did is magnify beyond all previous measures the gap that exists between the average devoted fan and the players they pay through the teeth to support. Many clubs (our own included) handled the furlough scheme appallingly. That closely followed by the Super League scheme, closely followed by the announcement of new eye-watering contracts for players (Mbappe being the latest example of this) further alienated an already shunned fanbase, and I believe what we are seeing - not just through those who act violently but in the desire to invade the pitch at all, even peacefully - is a desperate attempt by many grassroots fans to take back or at least feel some sort of 'ownership' of a sport they were once upon a time so familiar with. If course, you will never hear someone from within the establishment making this argument, as the growing distance between sport and fans lines their pockets rather nicely. But that's my two cents on the matter.
It's not one thing or the other. All the narrative from every news channel and everyone and anyone associated with liverpool and their fans is having a go at the French. I've not heard one saying anything remotely along the lines of "there were some fans without tickets or with fake tickets who were also creating or adding to the problem". On Saturday morning, I watched BBC News about my 8am. They were reporting at the airport, only on the fact flights were getting cancelled/delayed and the impact this was having on livpl fans getting to Paris. They were interviewing a number of fans including a couple. The bloke had a ticket, the woman didn't. She was adamant she was getting in. "I've done it before, I'll do it again" she said. When the reporter asked her what she will do if she can't she replied something like "don't worry I'm getting in". It was all laughed off as a bit of a joke. As I've posted elsewhere, the pepper spraying of legitimate fans was bang out of order. But there's little doubt in my mind their job, and the situation, was fuelled in some part by people like that woman stated above. She was one. And what it highlights is these were fans without tickets who were mixed in with friends, family, partners who did have tickets...so I can understand how hard it would be for police to distinguish between them when faced with groups trying to get in together.
Two dimensions to the turnstiles (opening, not opening) , and two for tickets (legit, fake) , which gives you the following scenarios : S1. fake ticket, turnstile not opening S2. fake ticket, turnstile opening S3. legit ticket, turnstile not opening S2. legit ticket, turnstile opening Obviously for the organisers you hope the count for S2 and S3 was zero. The count for S1 (as a % of the total allocation given to the Poool) will tell you the extent to which "chancers" were the problem. That aside, this is a nightmare for the Poool PR to have this associated with the club, whoever is in the right.
... as if people trying to get in without a ticket is some new and novel phenomenon. It's a feature of such high profile matches and as such was to be anticipated and catered for. Everything I've heard so far has been a story of complete lack of control, such as checkpoints before getting to the stadium turnstiles.
Exactly what I was about to say. Even with normal games this shouldn't happen. Reporters were talking about queues and delays hours before the match. The whole thing was a shambles. They were just randomly gassing people because they could. Nothing will happen. The "armies of robbers", as it's been described by Spanish media, were left alone, though. The ****s even let Jim Beglin get away:
Big difference between a few chancers trying to get in to a league game which rarely happens anyway, and 60,000 turning up to a 20,000 allocation (which btw was a joke in itself by UEFA). And we're not talking about separate groups with fake tickets, we're talking about queues of groups of families/friends/couples where 1 or 2 within those groups having dodgy tickets which the police would've struggled to distinguish between if the numbers are large enough. Have to disagree with you in laying all the blame on the French or their police. It was defo poorly organised and a fair share of the blame is theirs, but so is some of the fans. I really don't think the police just decided to kick off for no reason. If it was just about poor organisation, lack of control and checkpoints, then the Madrid fans would also have faced the same problems and they didn't.
This assumes that both sets of fans were treated equally. We don't know that this is the case, either deliberately or through chance.
