#but some of us aren't because we haven't been able to go near a football stadium since paris descended into a real life version of the purge

[kemlyn]

UEFA was responsible for the Champions League final fiasco in Paris last May, while Liverpool supporters were ‘instrumental’ in saving lives on the night, an official inquiry commissioned by the European football governing body has found.

A panel of experts including politicians, academics and lawyers was set up by UEFA itself last summer to investigate the chaotic scenes at the Stade de France, where Liverpool fans including women, children and the disabled were tear gassed by riot police, mugged by armed gangs of local youths, and kettled into dangerous crushes as they tried to enter the stadium to access European football’s showpiece fixture.

The group has now finalised it conclusions which lay the blame firmly at UEFA’s door, with its report saying that the organisation’s pre-match planning was based on an ‘absence of overall control or oversight of safety and security.’

The findings of the 158-page report reveal that senior figures at UEFA were aware that the organisation was ignoring its own safety and security policies in the build-up to the match, but did not act to rectify the situation, throwing into serious doubt the positions of key members of its hierarchy including President Aleksander Ceferin.

Furthermore, there was ‘no evidence’ to support the ‘reprehensible’ claims made by UEFA and the French authorities in the aftermath that masses of ticketless Liverpool fans attempting to gain illegal entry to the match were at fault. ‘Assertions regarding huge numbers of ticketless supporters, and those with fake tickets, have been wrongly inflated and have been stated as fact, to deflect responsibility for the planning and operational failures,’ the report reads.

Instead, the panel’s findings heap praise on fans who attended the game, saying that their behaviour significantly contributed to the narrow avoidance of a ‘mass fatality catastrophe.’

‘The collective actions of Liverpool FC supporters were probably instrumental in protecting vulnerable people and averting what might well have been more serious injuries and deaths,’ the panel found. ‘It is remarkable that no one lost their life.’