STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO THE REAL STORY BEHIND STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO By rob draper CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER TMOS_Masthead_NoSunday_NoLines TMOS_Masthead_Reversed_Small_NoLines TMOS_Masthead_Small_Reversed_NoCrest_NoLines The Mail on Sunday’s investigation into crowd control mismanagement at the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool, Stade de France, May 28, 2022 STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO Introduction The Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool on May 28th witnessed a catalogue of errors in crowd mismanagement by a range of authorities including the French police, French state authorities, the St Denis prefecture, UEFA, the French Football Federation (FFF), the transport authorities and those responsible for the ticket technology. Their mistakes could easily have led to a tragedy – potentially with multiple fatalities – and experts believe that only the collective memory of the Hillsborough disaster prevented deaths, with Liverpool fans moderating their behaviour whilst under great pressure. The Mail on Sunday had reporters on the ground amidst the crowd chaos and has reported extensively on mistakes made by authorities. As such, we were contacted by scores of witnesses and over the past few months we have gone back and questioned and corroborated accounts of more than 40 fans who attended the Champions League final. We also accumulated evidence from other credible and verified accounts, and spoken to crowd control experts. We assessed the initial report from Le Délégué Interministériel aux Grands Evénements Sportifs, compiled for the French Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, which came out a week after the final. We also refer to the more considered findings of the French Senate, which were released on 13th July 2022, which are based on testimony from UEFA, organisers, police, the FFF (France FA) and fans’ groups Spirit of Shankly and the Liverpool Disabled Supporters’Association, after questioning by the Committee for Culture, Education and Communication and which was led by Senators François-Noël Buffet and Laurent Lafon. The weight of all this evidence helps build a picture of what occurred that night. We have published it online to make it available as a public resource. All the evidence will be made available to Dr. Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, the Chair of the Independent Review, which was commissioned by UEFA and was expected to report later this autumn. This resource clearly cannot be as broad as that review and isn’t intended to be. We do not have access to some of the confidential evidence it will examine. However, we have accumulated enough evidence to give us confidence to know where key mistakes were made and, with the help of experts, make recommendations. STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO Summary of the causes of breakdown in crowd control at the Stade De France The chaos experienced by fans at the Champions League final last May was triggered by a technological meltdown, combined with erroneous pre-match messaging and negligent crowd control caused by a breakdown of coordination between respective authorities, according to the evidence amassed by The Mail on Sunday. The situation was exacerbated by outdated and flawed policing, based on decades-old prejudices, unhelpful and hostile stewarding and poor decision-making. The Stade de France itself seems to be vulnerable to potentially fatal crushing, especially near Gate X, and it appears to be well known by locals that the gates can be breached if there is sufficient chaos amidst large crowds. There also seems to be little concern by French authorities to police the area for visitors, with a focus on containing and confronting fans rather than protecting them from attacks from criminals. The evidence suggests that the incompetence of organisers, strike action by transport workers and a technological failure led to a situation where much that could go wrong, did go wrong, resulting in the chaotic and dangerous scenes outside the stadium. This situation was then exploited by local criminals, leading to the indiscriminate tear gassing by police, which ironically added to the breakdown of order. The accounts given by eyewitnesses describe an anarchic situation where authorities, including the police, lost their nerve, abandoned controls and used tear gas as the default response to attempt to mitigate earlier mistakes. The lack of control from the authorities continued post match, when criminals attacked Real Madrid and Liverpool fans. Weighing the evidence, it seems extraordinary that they weren’t more injured and that the authorities avoided fatalities. Judging by events since held at the Stade De France, which have seen similar police tactics employed and further attempts to breach turnstiles, it seems doubtful that lessons have been learned, which would be a huge cause for concern for the staging of the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympics in 2024, both of which events have the Stade De France as the central stadium. Indeed, given the long history of French police responding indiscriminately with tear gas and maintaining a negative view of football fans, it seems unlikely that the cultural change required will be achieved in the short term and, even then, only if the authorities wish to change that culture, which is not evident at present. The Champions League final was originally due to take place in St Petersburg, Russia, but the honour of hosting was withdrawn due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On February 25th, UEFA consulted with the French authorities and President Macron agreed to stage the final at Stade de France. It could be that as UEFA was presumably grateful that France was able to stage the event at a seemingly suitable location and at short noice – the authorities would normally have 18 months to prepare for such a final – the ruling body did not ask sufficient questions about the preparation. However, these are issues for the inquiry and French Senate to question further. This account relies principally on eyewitnesses on the ground. For the purposes of chronology, all times mentioned are Central European Times and it is worth bearing in mind that gates opened at 6pm and kick-off was intended to be 9pm. Tech meltdown causes the initial chaos French interior minister Darmanin and UEFA both said that a contributory factor to crowd control issues was Liverpool FC insisting STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO on issuing paper tickets for their fans rather digital tickets (which are harder to copy). This prompted Darmanin’s infamous and discredited claim of 40,000 ticketless fans. However, there were delays in processing fans throughout the stadium and these were just as bad with digital tickets. Indeed, experts have told the Mail on Sunday that the evidence collated indicates that there was an IT meltdown, either the stadium Wifi going down or a malfunction with scanners. Martin Kallen, chief executive of UEFA Events, which is the logistical arm of UEFA and organises major games such as the Champions League final, admitted to the French Senate that the system contained a major flaw in that digital tickets weren’t activated if Bluetooth wasn’t enabled on your a device. ‘If you arrived without Bluetooth active at the turnstiles then your QR code is not activated,’ Kallen said. This wasn’t communicated clearly to fans and was the first source of chaos. There was a ‘how to activate your ticket’ video released by UEFA. It seems unlikely this was sufficiently viewed nor was it communicated clearly. Fans report that mobile tickets required a two-stage authentication process. Mobile tickets weren’t activated until a steward had scanned it. (Though many of this scanners appeared to be faulty). Only then would it scan at the turnstiles. At detailed later, amidst the chaos, many of the initial ticket-authentication posts were abandoned, which would explain why tickets failed at the barrier, because they hadn’t been activated at this initial check. The Mail on Sunday has spoken to dozens of fans who experienced issues with digital tickets and were either dealt with aggressively by stewards, who assumed their tickets were fakes, or were simply told to crawl under turnstiles, which meant their tickets weren’t registered and thus would have meant the authorities had no clear record of how many people were entering the stadium. And Kallen told the French Senate inquiry that other technology failures played a part in the chaos, though he doesn’t seem to acknowledge how significant this was. ‘Numerous counterfeit tickets have been detected at the outer perimeter leading stewards to believe that the chemical pen was faulty,’ said Kallen. Indeed, this problem had already been flagged up by security at 5pm, an hour before the gates opened, though apparently nothing was done to rectify it or to change plans around how to process fans. All of this led to delay, chaos and a growing aggression and nervousness among stewards, who had already been briefed (badly with poor intelligence – see later in report) to expect multiple forgeries, and who would have also been conscious of possible attempts to storm gates, as had happened at the Euro 2020 final at Wembley. The focus by French authorities and UEFA on paper tickets as a root cause of issues appears to be a diversionary tactic at worst or, at best, a misunderstanding as to the cause of the chaos: ticket and technology issues were apparent throughout the stadium, with both digital and paper tickets. Liam Corocan, 27, is a project manager who was a guest of a sponsor and therefore had official UEFA tickets on the UEFA app and entered at Gate E, close to the Real Madrid end and far from the major problems. ‘I was told to enter via Gate E with other sponsors,’ he said. ‘I queued for around 45 minutes in a snaking queue around metal railings but when I got to the front, the railings from the side were removed by stewards, so there was a rush from ticket-holders as well as Parisians who I assume didn’t have tickets. I eventually got to the turnstile and my ticket was scanning red, despite being on the official UEFA app and saying entrance E on it. ‘The steward began shouting at me in French and told me to go back. But other people behind me told him that was impossible, due to the number of people STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO pushing at the back and the confined space we were in. He then snatched my phone off me and gestured that he was going to throw it over the fence before another member of staff came over and told me to crawl under the turnstile to get in, so my ticket wasn’t properly scanned until I got to the lounge entrance. It’s worth mentioning that after I crawled under the turnstile, around 40-50 Parisians climbed the fences and sprinted up the stairs into the stadium. ‘I started queuing at 8.10pm and got in at 9.25pm, which obviously isn’t as bad compared to other fans but obviously worth remembering it was a hospitality entrance. In terms of removing the barrier, I think so many people were pushing into the ‘snake’ queue system that they abandoned it and just made it a free for all, which obviously created chaos and made quite a toxic atmosphere amongst the people trying to get in, as some people had been legitimately queueing for over an hour.’ Benjamin Ward, from Basingstoke, said: ‘I had a ticket [for Gate X] on the UEFA ticket app issued by Just Eat and the stewards wouldn’t even look at it. Eventually a riot police/Robocop looked me up and down (but not at my ticket) and told me to crawl under the turnstile. There was no attempt to check or scan the ticket. This was about 9pm. My ticket was never scanned or activated. I took a picture showing how poorly organised the queue structures were and you can see fans organising their own queue with no barriers, ropes or stewards in sight. The same pattern was repeated at Gate R, which was on the opposite side of the stadium to gate H and again close to the Real Madrid end. Jan Steele, 57, from Reading. The director of a healthcare business had complimentary tickets for the game with her two sons Jim, 24, and Harry, 22, and entered at Gate R with a digital ticket. She said: ‘My legit ticket would not scan. I tried three different turnstiles with the steward. They told me to crawl under the turnstile in the end. I was in a party of four. The others didn’t scan either. Our seats were free so it was not any form of fake or duplicate ticket.’ Rupert Dell, 51, a music promoter said: ‘My ticket didn’t scan at turnstile R. I think because the bluetooth scan checks had been abandoned, as security had given up. They were meant to validate the QR code at the top of the ticket.’ A journalist known to the Mail on Sunday who had corporate tickets had the same experience. ‘Many smartphone tickets were fiddly and required multiple goings over before they scanned, which had the effect of slowing things down, even in the area with UEFA tickets.’ However, this wasn’t just due to the Bluetooth issue. Scanners weren’t operating properly even on digital tickets that did have Bluetooth enabled because there are multiple witnesses who say their tickets did scan, but only after three or four attempts and they hadn’t changed the Bluetooth settings. James Robinson, 23, a data analyst from Birmingham entered at Gate H, next to the Real Madrid end and again far from the major issues. He also had a digital ticket from the UEFA ballot and entered between 7.15pm and 7.30pm. He said: ‘I had mobile [digital] tickets from UEFA themselves and my ticket took five or six attempts to scan before eventually it did.’ Daniel Barnes, 24, who works in banking said: ‘I had two tickets for Gate S in the UEFA app which didn’t scan on the first attempt. I couldn’t give an exact figure on how many attempts it took for the ticket to scan but I would say around four or five.’ Philip Russell, from Dublin, had an official UEFA ticket on the UEFA app for Gate R and said: ‘We arrived at the stadium at 6.10pm local time. The ticket would not scan at the first ticket check just before the underpass. I scanned it three or four times before it eventually turned green.’ STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO If the authorities had assumed they could scan a ticket every three seconds, clearly their ability to process a line of fans would take four or five times longer than expected – possibly up to 15-18 seconds – if multiple tickets were failing and taking five attempts to scan. Even if it took 15 seconds per fan, it would take more than four hours for one scanner to process 1,000 fans. Gates opened at 6pm for a 9pm kick off, so there was no contingency time for such a breakdown of technology. With slow checks, each scanner could process only around 720 tickets in the three hours before kick-off. This same problems were encountered by Real Madrid fans. Amando Sanchez posted his experiences on Twitter, having attended with 13 family members, including his 87- year-old father. He had a ticket on paper, which was checked with a laser pen but possibly because it was creased or crumpled the procedure failed. Sanchez says: ‘The official screamed: “Fake ticket! Fake ticket!” After calming him down, I asked him to repeat the procedure and he was convinced my ticket was original [genuine]. Officials were scared and not given adequate tools to handle the situation. No info was given to fans.’ This was a ticket check at Rue Henri Delauney, at the north end of the stadium, the Real Madrid end. Some fans with UEFA digital tickets were denied entry, even though emails and invoices from UEFA confirm their tickets were genuine. Indeed, UEFA themselves have indicated digital tickets are very hard to forge. One fan, whose identity is known to the Mail on Sunday, spent more than £1,200 on four UEFA digital tickets was refused entry and never got into the game. UEFA have not compensated the fan. ‘I’ve been in touch with UEFA several times since to advise them but have had no response,’ the fan said. All the evidence suggests that, far from there being a problem only with Liverpool’s paper tickets at the Liverpool end, there were issues throughout the stadium and that forged tickets weren’t the source of delays but an IT meltdown or failure of the scanners. Indeed, the authentication process seemed to have been logistically flawed and overly ambitious and too complicated. It may work at a smaller event or with home fans who know the stadium. It seems to have been a recipe for chaos for foreign fans unfamiliar with procedures at a huge event. Far from paper tickets being the source of the problems, and digital tickets being the answer, it seems that digital tickets actually caused many of the queuing and crushing issues of the night. It is also possible that inexperienced stewards started to believe that there were multiple forged tickets because tickets were failing to scan and that is where the narrative of forged tickets began to build, which subsequently was seized on by authorities, notably Darmanin, as it would partially absolve them of blame. Failure of scanners at the Liverpool end exacerbates growing chaos; more fans with legitimate tickets turned away It is undoubtedly true that the worst problems were at the Liverpool end, the south end of the stadium around gates X, Y. Z, A and B. Didier Lallement, the Paris police chief, whose contract was not renewed in the aftermath of the chaos at Stade de France, has admitted that his initial estimate, repeated by Darmanin of 40,000 ticketless fans had ‘no scientific value’ and that ‘maybe I was wrong’. Indeed UEFA’s own estimates were that only 2,589 fans with fake tickets attempted access and Stade de France sources put the number at 2,800. UEFA Events CEO Kallen has said: ‘We do not agree with the 30- 40,000 fake tickets figure given very quickly by the French authorities. But there were more than 2,600.’ STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO But the figure is hard to quantify, given that the tech issues extended to scanning paper tickets at the Liverpool end, which exacerbated the delays. It is unclear whether legitimate tickets were failing to scan and so being recorded as fakes. And were those fans with legitimate tickets who were turned away counted among the so-called ‘fake’ tickets? Due to the technological chaos, it would seem almost impossible to make projections regarding fake tickets. Tickets were being initially checked with laser pens, which were faulty. These are soft ticket checks prior to the turnstiles, which is aimed at weeding out ticketless fans or forgeries. This check also included a security pat down. Bastien Chaval, 28, journalist, a French native but Liverpool fan, encountered the problem with the faulty laser pens as early as 6.15pm at the first ticket check and witnessed how it was making the authorities nervous and hostile to fans. ‘A steward failed to scan my genuine ticket thinking it was a fake one and telling me so, aggressively. We tried again and it worked.’ Even in the less crowded gates, these were evident with the paper tickets failing to scan, which was causing authorities to become nervous. Angus Light, an advertising producer, arrived at the turnstiles at Gate C in the less-crowded east side of the stadium at around 8.25pm with tickets he had bought from Liverpool. He illustrates the tension that was building as a result of rejected tickets. He said: ‘I queued up and got to the turnstiles and my ticket took four times to go green. The ticket was a barcode and you stuck under scanner. Three times it went red. Sometimes, if the ticket isn’t straight [you can have an issue], so [if it happens] once [you think it’s normal] but the security guy is looking at me thinking: “Hold on, you need to go back.” And I knew it wasn’t a fake. It came from club. I was 100 per cent sure. The fourth time it went green and I thought: “Thank f*** for that!” There must have been problems with tickets being scanned and the technology.’ Some weren’t as fortunate. Joe Goulding, 26, the head of governance at a charity, had tickets for Gate A. His tickets were issued by Liverpool FC, appeared to the MoS to be legitimate, and he can provide copies for UEFA to check. He said: ‘My legitimate ticket scanned red and upon the steward inviting me to try again, unsuccessfully, so I was forcibly removed from the turnstile and given no advice on how to rectify this. Two other people who had purchased their tickets through the club on the same order had the same issue. The ticket office advised that the ticket had already been used to enter the stadium hence why I couldn’t get in - one of the others eventually got in and found three locals in our seats. I myself ended up watching the game in a bar. I’m sure the tickets were legit, they were purchased by a colleague who was successful in the ballot and I have a copy of the email he received from the club confirming the legitimacy of the ticket.’ The Mail on Sunday have seen this email and tickets and they appear legitimate. Sean Griffiths, 24, from the Wirral, had paper tickets from Liverpool for Gate Y and has shown the MoS email verification from Liverpool, which shows the tickets are genuine. He had two tickets which wouldn’t scan and which resulted in him being denied entry. He said: ‘We had a great day until we got to St Denis.’ He reports locals throwing bottles at the train station ‘and then queues for two plus hours to get to the ground, where the crushing happened’. The DIGES report says that 2,700 Liverpool fans with valid tickets never entered the stadium, though this may include fans whose tickets which failed to scan and who were instructed to crawl under turnstiles. UEFA has made a commitment to reimburse those fans but fans the MoS have spoken to haven’t been reimbursed. STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO Matt Houston, 38, a company director, was at Gate C but had his ticket checked in the pre filtering process at 6.53pm. ‘Most of the people getting rejected seemed to be local French, but I heard one young Scouse lad with a paper ticket say he’d tried five times already and was going back again. There seemed to be no easy route out for anyone rejected, which I think just made it more likely that people would try again.’ When he got to Gate C, which was the opposite side of the stadium to Gate X, where the worst problems were being experienced, he said: ‘The turnstile there was almost empty when I went through. It seemed mad that there was such a bottleneck in stage one of a two-stage process. I said to my dad at that point there would be major trouble later on when the pressure built on that ramp.’ This is first evidence of the mismanagement of crowd flows. James Emmot, 32, an insurance broker from Carnforth in Lancashire, said: ‘I was at Gate C and my ticket failed four times before being successfully scanned on the fifth attempt. I was grateful to have a patient steward at that gate, as I believe many others would’ve been turned away after a couple of attempts.’ Glen Gates, from Belfast, was at Gate A, away from the worst of the issues but still fraught with problems with local youths and IT failure. He said: ‘I was with a friend and our tickets were purchased via the Liverpool FC ballot. We were in block A10, so entered via Gate A. Entry was so slow and they only had two of five turnstiles opened. It was scary to get the front and there were crushes, fights with French locals who stormed the gate and got in, causing it to close for 10 minutes. ‘We got to the front and the security took our tickets and scanned it themselves. My friend got in after four ticket scans. I am convinced the first was successful but the security blocked the barrier so he couldn’t pass through. My ticket was scanned five times before I got in. I’m convinced the slow entry and reduced turnstiles were due to the ticket scanning being very hit and miss.’ Just next to gate A, was Gate Z at the south end of the stadium. One fan, named Ben, whose full name is known to the Mail on Sunday, said: ‘After standing at Gate Z for two hours we were told by supporters on the other side of the gates that there were a few gates open round the side. Having waited for two hours to get in, it was now past 9pm and we said we would go and see if any other of the gates were open. ‘We went towards Gate B and there was a much smaller queue with the gate open. After queuing there – and having to be wary of pickpockets – we got to the front of the gate. The steward said the turnstiles weren’t working so after scanning my ticket nothing happened and the steward ripped the top of the ticket stub off. We then had to duck/crawl under the turnstile [legitimately, as advised by steward] in order to enter after showing our ticket.’ Sarah Tudor 45, from Staffordshire and working in Higher Education, was with her sister had been so distressed by the crushing that was now occurring outside the Gates X, Y, Z and A at the Liverpool end. They walked round to Gate C and tried to enter there. ‘My ticket for gate Z did not scan properly,’ she said. ‘The steward looked at the ticket and waved me round the barrier. The ticket was a genuine Liverpool FC ballot ticket.’ Though it seems stewards were attempting to make the best of a bad job by allowing fans in without scanning tickets to avoid sending them back into crowd crushes, at this point it must have been clear to authorities that they had lost control of the situation. They couldn’t now be sure about how many people were in the stadium if multiple scanning failures meant fans were being told to crawl under or climb over turnstiles. It is at this point that the kick- off should have been delayed or the game postponed to another day. STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO 0 Poor signage, no stewarding and dangerous police control means ,000 Liverpool fans are directed into a potentially fatal crush The worst problems would be on Ave du President Wilson, which runs north towards the stadium towards a ramp or walkway, which leads up the stadium concourse to Gate X. An initial ticket check and pat-down security check was taking place on the ramp between 6pm and 7.30pm, when it was abandoned amidst chaotic scenes. This was doubtless partly due to the faulty laser pens used to scan tickets at this point. This route went under the A86 Paris ring road, commonly referred to as the ‘motorway bridge’ or ‘underpass’ in accounts and the issues were made worse because police vans were parked across the road under the bridge deliberately to slow the crowd. This is where crushing occurred and where the organisers came close to fatalities. The Ave du President Wilson inadvertently had become the main approach to the stadium for almost all Liverpool fans due to potentially catastrophic messaging prior to the game. Because of a strike by some French train workers, mixed messaging had supporters believing that the RER B, La Plaine Stade de France station would be closed or not fully functioning. It was in fact working but not at full capacity. However, according to the Senate’s initial inquiry, from around 3.30pm, messages on the UEFA app and at stations were telling fans to use RER D and avoid RER B. This might have proved fatal and there appeared little coordination between those issuing transport advice and those planning crowd control. It meant that a huge number of fans, vastly more than expected, were heading for the RER D Stade de France Station. Le Monde’s investigations, with access to official transport figures, say 37,000 fans tried to access the stadium from that station, four times more than usual. The Senate report and Darmanin have confirmed these figures and the incomprehensible lack of coordination between the various authorities responsible for the organisation, with the FFF (France FA) apparently unaware that the plans had changed. The Senate report reads: ‘The FFF maintains that the transfer [of fans] from line B to line D was aggravated by messages broadcast in stations on the afternoon of May 28 advising them not to use line B. These announcements, which were not provided for in the mobility plan, would have had the effect of saturating line D, where traffic went from 10 to 15,000 people to 36,000 people.’ Indeed, at the sell-out Indochine pop concert on May 21st, the week prior to the Champions League final, the RER B La Plaine Stade de France station was be used by the majority of fans, with 21,000 passing through it and dispersing to Gates Z, A, B, C and D. This would have been the natural station for most Liverpool fans to alight at but on the night of the Champions League final the partially-closed station was used by just 6,200 fans. Instead, 37,000 headed for the RER D Stade De France, as advised by authorities. But at the Indochine concert the week before, only 9,100 fans pass the RER D Stade de France station rather than the 37,000 a week later. The authorities appeared to be working to their usual plan and don’t seem to have accounted for the strike. That initial lack of crowd management was then exacerbated by an extraordinary signage mishap. UEFA maps issued pre-match made clear that Liverpool fans arriving from the Line D Stade De France station should have proceeded east, along Ave Francois Mitterand, crossed over Ave De President Wilson and kept going east along Ave Francis de Pressense, before turning left into Ave du Stade de France, where there was another initial ticket check, which according to fans was staffed with many more stewards than at Gate X. But, because there were no signs and STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO no stewarding actively to direct supporters, virtually all the 37,000 fans arriving at that station turned left into Ave De President Wilson. Indeed the only signage on the night suggested fans take an early left that would lead onto that road. It meant four times the expected number of fans were now heading towards the motorway bridge. The crowd crush, already dangerous because of this lack of crowd control, would become worse due to police decisions. The police had narrowed the walkway towards Gate X at the the motorway bridge/underpass from around 8m to a 3m gap by parking their police vans across the approach as a deliberate obstacle. This was around 15-20m from the walkway/ramp leading to the gates, which is where the first tickets checks were due to take place. The idea presumably was so that fans couldn’t overwhelm what was meant to be the initial check of tickets, just after the motorway bridge, at a walkway up to the stadium. The Mail on Sunday experienced this crush at around 7.15pm and alerted police to the danger, which seemed obvious. Police were unresponsive and unsympathetic, refusing to move vans or speak to superiors to do so. There seemed an inability to change plans or react to changing circumstances. Police sources told the Mail on Sunday that the narrowing of the flow was standard procedure and they saw nothing strange about it. Indeed, the following week a Daily Mail reporter witnessed the exact same methods used France’s game against Croatia. Professor Keith Still, who runs Crowd Risk Analysis Ltd and has developed an MSc in crowd safety, was consultant at Olympics Games at Sydney 2000 and London 2012 and the 2011 Royal Wedding and was an expert witness for Hillsborough inquiry. He examined our video evidence of police narrowing the route with their vans. He said: ‘High-density pressure is my specific area of study. It’s a very dangerous thing to do. It’s what causes fatalities. You’re in a crush zone. It takes about 30 seconds to lose consciousness if you get constrictive or restrictive asphyxia and within about six minutes you’re brain dead. ‘Whenever you funnel a large number of people down to a narrow space there is that inherit risk. It’s basic crowd planning. You would never do it in any area. Any slip or fall in that environment would have been catastrophic. Look at the queue design. I’m using that now as an example for my courses. This is not how to do it.’ Crowd numbers and technology failure causes initial tickets to break down. Authorities lose control and are forced to abandon them The initial ticket check was a line of five aisles for a brief ticket and security check at the bottom of the ramp up to the stadium, with around two stewards per aisle, one to search and one to scan tickets. However, at around 7.30pm, these checks were abandoned as the crowd was overwhelming. This was a crucial decision, which is the point at which you can conclude that the authorities had lost control of crowd management. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of fans were now missing the initial ticket checks. As well as allowing local youths without tickets to infiltrate ticket-holders and reach the stadium, it also meant that anyone with a digital ticket wouldn’t have their ticket authenticated, as explained on the UEFA video. For their digital tickets to work at the turnstile, they had to be validated by a steward at the initial check. Now hundreds were heading to turnstiles where their tickets wouldn’t work and where they would be met by hostile stewards accusing them of being in possession of fake digital tickets. It also meant that delays were now going to be worse, as tickets failed to scan at the turnstile. It would lead to the decision of some benign stewards to let hundreds STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO (possibly more) of fans simply to climb over or crawl under turnstiles, an understandable decision but one which indicated authorities now had no control over numbers in the stadium. James Emmot explained the experience under the motorway bridge where the police van had caused the dangerous crush. ‘We experienced delays in the walkthrough under the road as we were forced to wait for a good while, and again under the bridge when we were penned in alongside the police vans. We were pressed alongside the far left-hand side where there were a few, large concrete pillars. Due to having an elderly chap with us and in the interest of his safety we opted to climb, and assisted our friend over the small metal fence and walked on the road between the parked cars and the fence where police were stood – we did this despite them trying to push us back – joining back at the other side of the bridge just before the ramp through a gate. At that point they were just letting anyone through so didn’t really experience delays where they were meant to be checking tickets at the foot of the ramp.’ Paul Walmsely, 53, an author and research fellow at the University of Liverpool, who was at Hillsborough in 1989, explained how the crush at the motorway bridge/underpass built up: ‘We headed for the stadium and saw no guidance as to which way to go so we followed the red masses. We ended up under the underpass about 6pm, that’s three hours before kick-off. The stadium was about 300 yards from us at this point. The crowd was very slow moving and patient. It was getting to the point of feeling edgy and concerning as we got to the front of the first [ticket] check, which was 6.40pm. We’d moved about 250 yards in 40 minutes. It was hot, crammed and the Liverpool fans had to steward the situation. Suddenly, the first check was abandoned and the flow up the ramp towards the stadium was fast flowing.’ In the absence of any stewarding or direction at the RER D Stade de France station, Ian Lawrence, 53, a company director, who was at Hillsborough, also followed the crowd to the underpass/ motorway bridge near Gate X. ‘Most of the 37,000 people headed towards the entry to the stadium where just after the underpass there were only four to five checkers doing the initial soft ticket check. Apparently had we alighted from the Station at B line there were around 15-20 ticket checkers. It is without a doubt that all of these events accumulated to cause the bottleneck at that particular entrance, which was the ramp/ walkway adjacent to stadium entrance X. ‘We got to the back of the bottleneck along Ave du President Wilson just after 6pm and got through the soft ticket check at the bottom of the ramp at 7.20pm. The ticket check was still going on at that time but was abandoned soon after. I was at Hillsborough. The biggest issue there was police making decisions and not forward planning for the consequences of that decision. Exactly the same has occurred here, and the only reason there were no disastrous consequences was the patience of the fans, many of us having been at Hillsborough’ The clear evidence for the lack of coordination between the authorities and the failure of their pre-match plan comes from the DIGES report. That reports that the FFF, who were in charge of security, had planned for 10 lines of pat- down security checks manned by 41 security guards for the approach from RER D – this is the approach that would be used by 37,000 fans on the night. The approach from RER B, which was used by just 6.200 fans, had 20 lines of pat-down security checks – twice as many – manned by 57 security guards. Clearly, they had made a plan based on pre-strike crowd control and, it seems, they had not been told that fans were being directed to RER D. This would be an abject failure of competence if true. The respective proportions broadly tally STADE DE FRANCE FIASCO with fans’ accounts on the night, with the approach from RER B being straightforward and having more staff. There also appeared to be no ability to change plans or redeploy individuals on the night when crowd flows were clearly different to what had been anticipated. However, fan accounts also suggest the number of staff was less than claimed by authorities. They say that the initial ticket check from RER D was a line of five aisles for a brief ticket and security check at the bottom of the ramp up to the stadium, with around two stewards per aisle, one to search and one to scan tickets. Ian Lawrence gave further details on the inadequacy of the checks on the ramp/ walkway leading up to Gate X and the stadium concourse: ‘The bottom of ramp was the first ticket check. It’s about 6-7m wide and had 4/5 ticket checkers. Each check took say 10-15 secs. So best-case scenario they could do 30 in a minute. They definitely didn’t do 30 in a minute though! So 30 a minute would be 1,800 an hour. Even if it was only 20,000 fans using that route, it would have taken over 10 hours to do the first ticket check. This check was abandoned around 7.30pm, as I’ve seen photos and video of the area with no ticket check. One of the early videos claiming fans were bunking in was actually fans climbing up the wall onto the ramp to escape the crush below. Of course the damage had been done by then, and all this did was release the thousands held in the bottleneck into the queues by the gates, which by that time were already closed!’ Professor Still said: ‘When you look at the rate fans are arriving and the rate they’re going through, it was never going to work. Ticket-check is faster than the pat-down so you need to provide significantly more pat-down areas than ticket check areas but they matched that one for one. I can’t see any evidence that this could have ever worked.’ Rupert Dell was caught in the rush that was developing under a motorway bridge/ underpass. ‘I had approached the road leading to the underpass at just before 7pm and got to the concourse at 8.30pm, it took 90mins. I remember being underneath the underpass at 8.10pm, not moving, thinking there is no way we will make kick-off. The ramp after the underpass took us [up and] outside Gate S and R. These are, I think, the neutral gates but it was full of Liverpool fans with another huge queue and all the gates shut when we got there.’ He had digital tickets but there were no checks by the time he got to the initial ticket check. ‘At the end of the underpass, there had been [the initial] ticket checks but ... by the time we got to those checks, they had been abandoned.’ He is another who had issues with his digital ticket scanning, pos