This Year’s Champions League Final Was a Showcase for Police Brutality in France
The Champions League final is one of the biggest events in world sports. UEFA and the French police turned it into a brutal, dangerous fiasco — and Emmanuel Macron’s ministers are lying through their teeth about what happened.
Police spray tear gas at Liverpool fans outside the stadium prior to the UEFA Champions League final in Paris between Liverpool FC and Real Madrid, May 28, 2022. (Matthias Hangst / Getty Images)
The Champions League final is meant to be the pinnacle of European football. This year, the sport’s governing body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), joined forces with the French state to offer a very different kind of spectacle — one of casual police brutality and official negligence that might have had lethal consequences. Coming just weeks after Emmanuel Macron creaked his way into a second presidential term, the match in Paris held up an unflattering mirror to Macron’s France and to the condition of the modern game.
“Out in the Wild”
Unsurprisingly, Macron’s government ministers weren’t happy to be confronted with their own reflection, and they’ve responded by blaming the victims and wheeling out discredited talking points. Macron himself said back in 2019 that it was impermissible to talk about “police violence” or “repression” in a country like France: “Such words are unacceptable in a state under the rule of law.”
From this perspective, it doesn’t matter if there were hundreds or even thousands of witnesses, including politicians and police officers from Britain. They must have imagined it when they saw French riot cops using tear gas and pepper spray for no good reason against Liverpool supporters who had been channeled into dangerous bottlenecks on the way to the stadium.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.