Champions League Final

[Dr.Karl]

I have no sympathy for those that charged gates, with that there is a strong chance of people getting in with force. The actions of those fans was deplorable and should be condemned. With counterfeit tickets, they shouldn't have any chance of getting in.

I agree with you. My gripe is the fact the Liverpool fans turned round today and blamed the police, UEFA, the Greeks, the bastard stadium designers, Roger the cabin boy, Captain bloody Birdseye, Suzie fecking Quatro and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

They refuse to accept any responsibilty for entering the stadium without the proper tickets. And they're wrong for that.

Yes absolutely, both sides are to blame. I'm not Liverpool's biggest fan, believe me but you get the impression some just want to blame the Liverpool fans out of spite and the failure of the Pool fans themselves to accept responsibility just intensifies it.

[H. Pedersen]

To get back to the match itself, I was absolutely shocked by Milan's second goal. Inzaghi was threatening to spring the offside trap over and over again. He finally did it, and three Liverpool defenders stand there with hands up in the air as he rounds the keeper and taps in one of the slowest shots I've ever seen. If one of the defenders turns as soon as the ball is played in and charges back to the line to back up Reyna I really think they might have cleared it. Summed up Liverpool's performance as a whole, they just seemed lazy.

Cue the scousers blaming the fact that Carragher was so distraught by the thought of fans not getting in that he couldn't defend properly.

[Nozza]

To get back to the match itself, I was absolutely shocked by Milan's second goal. Inzaghi was threatening to spring the offside trap over and over again. He finally did it, and three Liverpool defenders stand there with hands up in the air as he rounds the keeper and taps in one of the slowest shots I've ever seen. If one of the defenders turns as soon as the ball is played in and charges back to the line to back up Reyna I really think they might have cleared it. Summed up Liverpool's performance as a whole, they just seemed lazy.

Cue the scousers blaming the fact that Carragher was so distraught by the thought of fans not getting in that he couldn't defend properly.

You're obsessed with shite American players, you.

[H. Pedersen]

Oops.

[Bruce Rioja]

Of course there is some blame to be laid at our feet.

Only some? Honestly mate, I've read as much of your hypocritical shite as I possibly can. "I'm outraged that genuine ticket holders couldn't get in, that'll be because the likes of me assisted two ticketless types to get in. Justice for the 90 odd, but not if me with one ticket can get a total of three in, then everyman for himself is just fine".
I have to say, Blurred, that for one that I hold in fairly high regard you've slumped in my estimation with some of the stuff that you've posted on here, fella.
This very stadium and the very same authorities hosted the Olympic games at this very same stadium only three years ago, without incident. Yet according to you the problem has got nothing to do with the clientele. Blurred, last night you were the fecking problem

[Batman]

[blurred]

Of course there is some blame to be laid at our feet.

Only some? Honestly mate, I've read as much of your hypocritical shite as I possibly can. "I'm outraged that genuine ticket holders couldn't get in, that'll be because the likes of me assisted two ticketless types to get in. Justice for the 90 odd, but not if me with one ticket can get a total of three in, then everyman for himself is just fine".

This very stadium and the very same authorities hosted the Olympic games at this very same stadium only three years ago, without incident. Yet according to you the problem has got nothing to do with the clientele. Blurred, last night you were the fecking problem

Yes, only some. If Liverpool (or any other team's fans) had tried to bunk into Old Trafford or the Stade de France which have both hosted Champions League Finals in the recent past in anything like the numbers attempted yesterday they'd have been well and truly f*cked off by the policing, stewarding and turnstiles that were capable and indeed used to dealing with thousands of football fans. Reckon you could bunk in to the Reebok on your average league game? What do you think your chances would be with a counterfeit ticket? Slim? What do you reckon your chances would be with the 'Bolton Wanderers Credit Card Application Form' from the club shop? What do you think your chances would be with absolutely nothing - reckon you'd get through those turnstiles? I'm not condemning people for trying to get in for nothing, or for chancing their arm with a forged ticket. I will condemn those who charge the gates, use violence, cause crushes or generally unsafe situations. At any other stadium a man with a blag ticket pays his money and takes his chance - he may get in, more likely he'll get f*cked off and denied entry. Yesterday it just didn't matter - blag tickets were UV scanned, shown to be fake because the requisite pattern didn't come up, and yet the stewards still flashed them through the checkpoints. Abject and absolute incompetence creating dangerous situations for all involved.

People are always going to chance their arm to see if they can get into a huge match like this, especially with such a paltry allocation meaning there are more than the usual number of desperate lunatics without tickets. A football ground could cope with that. Competent authorities could cope with that. Neither of those were present last night.

Also, by their very nature the Olympics and the European Cup Final are two incredibly different beasts, and if you can't see that then you're incredibly short sighted.

The sum total of my 'helping' people in (as I've said previously in this thread) was being aware that they were behind me and ticketless and turning a blind eye to it - I wasn't pushing police out the way or forcing gates, just going through ticket checks (ha) which were woefully inadequate. They could only have been checking 1 in 5 people with any degree of anything even approaching scrutiny, so I was happy to offer my ticket to be shown, given that I knew it was a legitimate ticket through the club - the hundreds of ticketless people that I saw going through at the same time as me needed absolutely no assistance whatsoever. As I was approaching the stadium at these various points various people were all talking about whether they had blag tickets, some people holding up random bits of paper/leaflets as tickets and some just brazenly walking straight through. The organisation was a farce, and this was still 2 hours before kick off, hardly a last minute rush.

[blurred]

Wondered how long it'd take one of you to find that picture.

What goes beep beep beep, etc...

[Tombwfc]

I will condemn those who charge the gates, use violence, cause crushes or generally unsafe situations.

So going in ticketless isn't causing an unsafe situation?

[TANGODANCER]

Blurred, you really are baffling me here.

You're expressing outrage at the fact that hundreds of Liverpool fans got through the barriers without paying/having tickets, in other words cheating, and you want to stick the blame on the Greek police and stewards? What about all those same hundreds/thousands maybe, who knowingly kept out there fellow fans who had tickets by deliberately bluffing, pushing and crashing their way in there regardless. How much blame should they have? How much blame goes the way of the counterfeit ticket dodgers? How much to those who had no intention of paying but crashed in there anyway? A bit like saying "You know we'll cheat, but we're not to blame. It's up to you to stop us!"

You can't have it both ways mate. If they only went for the atmosphere, as you claim, then what were they doing at the stadium in the first place? Complain about the organisation if you will, but don't try to justify the actions that caused it at the same time.
Try blaming the real culprits. I doubt if that would go down to well on the Mersey.

Oh, and remember: "You'll never Rawk alone!"

[Bruce Rioja]

You can't have it both ways mate. If they only went for the atmosphere, as you claim, then what were they doing at the stadium in the first place? Complain about the organisation if you will, but don't try to justify the actions that caused it at the same time.

Exactly. Me and a crew of mates went out to Frankfurt for the World Cup last year. We had no tickets but we tried to pick some up outside the stadium. When it became clear that they were going to cost us a prohibitive amount we went back into the city to join all the other fans that had done likewise and had one hell of a party watching the Ecuador game on the big screen. It's what civilised types do!!!! We didn't try to find someone that'd sneak us in on the strength of one ticket, we didn't try to steal the tickets of others, we didn't try to enter the ground with anything other than a ticket for the game. we did not cause death amongst (a) Our own, like at Hillsborough (b) Others, like at Heysel, and then blame the local authorities. How come Liverpool fans labour under this misapprehension that they're the best in the world when death through dishonesty and selfishness, whilst always pointing blame at the relevant authorities, follows no other club, or country, in the world but them?

[Nozza]

Posted on the SMB, by someone who got was on another forum. This was posted by a Liverpool fan.

Veni - Vidi - Vidic 24 May 16:36
Went to the game in Athens yesterday with my father/brother in law,both Liverpool fans, I have never witnessed anything like it in my life, got off to a fairly smooth start with an early morning flight on a Jumbo, decent crew and decent breakfast. Arrived Athens around lunch time after luckily getting in a taxi whilst people were fighting their way onto coaches and made our way to the main square where everyone seemed to be congregating, most people seemed in a decent mood but some were well on their way to being bladdered, nothing wrong with that but at least 3/4 of the people I spoke to were ticketless and ALL of them intended getting in one way or another. Heard more than one person say they'd seen people being mugged for tickets off fellow fans.

Decided to make our way to the stadium as early as possible and headed up there on the metro at about 5:30, there were already groups of ticketless people congregating at the checkpoints and it was obvious things were going to get out of hand sooner or later, there were numerous checkpoints but the volume of people was such that checking the tickets was an impossibility and there was no queueing, people were being crushed and I saw tickets being snatched on more than one occasion, at least once of a kid no more than 12.

Fortunately for us our tickets were from the Uefa ballot and most of the problems once in the stadium were in the end to our left, with at least an hour to go to kick off it was practically full and you could see that for every person stood on a seat their was somebody stood in front of them and also the stairways were full from top to bottom. It was clear that there were THOUSANDS more people in there than there should have been. Only found out today that people with tickets were locked out but it doesn't surprise me.

The trip back to the airport was even worse, there were people who had flights booked for today who were blagging their way onto flights last night and half weren't even asked to show their tickets, it was unbelievable.

My brother in law, who was injured at Hillsborough and was lucky to survive was deeply upset, it was an absolute disgrace, both of organisation and the behaviour of fans was appalling, it's an absolute miracle no one was killed, it could easily have got out of hand.

I could have sold my ticket for god knows how much a couple of weeks back.

That's my european travels over with for good as far as football's concerned, with any club.

[blurred]

You can't have it both ways mate. If they only went for the atmosphere, as you claim, then what were they doing at the stadium in the first place? Complain about the organisation if you will, but don't try to justify the actions that caused it at the same time.

Exactly. Me and a crew of mates went out to Frankfurt for the World Cup last year. We had no tickets but we tried to pick some up outside the stadium. When it became clear that they were going to cost us a prohibitive amount we went back into the city to join all the other fans that had done likewise and had one hell of a party watching the Ecuador game on the big screen. It's what civilised types do!!!! We didn't try to find someone that'd sneak us in on the strength of one ticket, we didn't try to steal the tickets of others, we didn't try to enter the ground with anything other than a ticket for the game. we did not cause death amongst (a) Our own, like at Hillsborough (b) Others, like at Heysel, and then blame the local authorities. How come Liverpool fans labour under this misapprehension that they're the best in the world when death through dishonesty and selfishness, whilst always pointing blame at the relevant authorities, follows no other club, or country, in the world but them?

I never claimed to know the motives of those who went - there will be those who did just as Bruce for the World Cup, including two of my best mates who were ticketless and after failing to find a reasonably priced ticket, and watched it on the big screen near the old stadium. I felt gutted for them not having a ticket, but they found no joy in the square in town or around the ground, so just went and watched it elsewhere.

There will be those who bought tickets and believed them to be genuine, which turn out to be forgeries. There will be those who bought cheap forgeries knowing full well their provenance but willing to chance it. There will be those who tried to chance their arm of sneaking in with no ticket to see if they could get through unchecked. I would condemn none of these aforementioned categories of people, because they are just trying to see their team in one of the biggest games of their lives, and there's no malice in their actions.

There are then those who steal from other supporters, those who tout tickets purporting to be genuine in the knowledge that they are fake for extortionate amounts of money, those who try to use force of numbers, or physical force to gain access to the stadium, and cause rushes which are dangerous for fans, stewards and police alike. The aforementioned categories of people disgust me. Fortunately I didn't witness (m)any of the above, certainly not of violence and theft at any rate. I returned home today to find out one of the lads that I go to the game with (a lovely, mild-mannered and quiet and unassuming 19 year old lad) had his ticket robbed off him before the first checkpoint. Absolute scum.

[blurred]

Posted on the SMB, by someone who got was on another forum. This was posted by a Liverpool fan.

That's my european travels over with for good as far as football's concerned, with any club.

That's a view that's prevailing across a lot of the Liverpool forums to be honest. I'm appalled at what went on yesterday, on both sides (ie locals and liverpool 'fans'). I've been in some sort of bewildered shock all day, and only too glad that it's the end of the season. Hopefully a summer off will allow me to forget the majority about this and regain my love of football, but if we had a league game coming on Saturday I'd almost certainly jib it off. I've had enough of football for so so many reasons.

[sluffy]

There will be those who bought tickets and believed them to be genuine, which turn out to be forgeries. There will be those who bought cheap forgeries knowing full well their provenance but willing to chance it. There will be those who tried to chance their arm of sneaking in with no ticket to see if they could get through unchecked. I would condemn none of these aforementioned categories of people, because they are just trying to see their team in one of the biggest games of their lives, and there's no malice in their actions.

Was the ground an all seater stadium?

If it was - and the game was a sell out - then those people who got into the ground without tickets or knowingly with a forgery - must have prevented genuine ticket holders from getting into the match?

Surely you cannot be condoning such actions if it deprives honest people with genuine tickets from not seeing the match?

These people must have known that their selfish actions would make other innocent people suffer somewhere further down the line?

I cannot possibly see how you can support such selfish acts even if they are being done by your fellow fans and / or mates.

[blurred]

Was the ground an all seater stadium?

If it was - and the game was a sell out - then those people who got into the ground without tickets or knowingly with a forgery - must have prevented genuine ticket holders from getting into the match?

Surely you cannot be condoning such actions if it deprives honest people with genuine tickets from not seeing the match?

These people must have known that their selfish actions would make other innocent people suffer somewhere further down the line?

I cannot possibly see how you can support such selfish acts even if they are being done by your fellow fans and / or mates.

The ground was an all seater stadium, as all UEFA 5 star stadia are. I'm quite unsure as to how people think the world works, here - do you think there's a big clicker counting people into the stadium somewhere and as soon as they get to 64,000 or whatever the figure is that they shut all the gates? People who get in on duplicate/forged tickets habitually squash into the spaces or stand at the end of rows/in the aisles. I don't know if this is a peculiarly Liverpool thing, because I can only talk from my first-hand experiences, but I've known this to happen on several occasions.

As for your 'didn't they think of everyone else' point? Someone getting in on a blag ticket does not per se stop anyone who has a genuine ticket from entering the ground. The problem yesterday was the sheer weight of numbers, brought about by the Athens authorities' inability (or more from my experience it was a complete unwillingness) to prevent counterfeit tickets gaining access to the ground, and more laughably allowing the ingress of people who had no tickets whatsoever and were almost literally just waltzing through the checkpoints. I'll show you a copy of what people were gaining access to the grounds with if I can find my data cable for my phone (or scan them in at work tomorrow) to further explain the sheer ludicrousness of it all.

Imagine if you will that Bolton get to the UEFA Cup Final in the next couple of years, and are given an allocation of 15,000 tickets for the final. Are you telling me that only 15,000 Bolton fans would be in that stadium come kick off? I think we all know that that would not be the case. Each one of us has a line that we'd be willing to go up to in terms of our own moral values to try and gain entry to the stadium - whether that's buying a ticket from a tout, wittingly or unwittingly using a forged ticket, attempting to sneak in if at all possible, scaling a wall, organising a break with scores of their friends in the hope of overwhelming the stewards/police, getting inside a Trojan horse, whatever!

[Nozza]

I have been in at least 3 Sunderland crowds where fans have been on both seats and aisles.

So, it is generally a universal thing.

Rotherham away - 03 - we won 1-0.
Bradford away 98ish - we won 4-0
Leeds away 00 - we lost 2-0.

[sluffy]

Was the ground an all seater stadium?

If it was - and the game was a sell out - then those people who got into the ground without tickets or knowingly with a forgery - must have prevented genuine ticket holders from getting into the match?

Surely you cannot be condoning such actions if it deprives honest people with genuine tickets from not seeing the match?

These people must have known that their selfish actions would make other innocent people suffer somewhere further down the line?

I cannot possibly see how you can support such selfish acts even if they are being done by your fellow fans and / or mates.

The ground was an all seater stadium, as all UEFA 5 star stadia are. I'm quite unsure as to how people think the world works, here - do you think there's a big clicker counting people into the stadium somewhere and as soon as they get to 64,000 or whatever the figure is that they shut all the gates? People who get in on duplicate/forged tickets habitually squash into the spaces or stand at the end of rows/in the aisles. I don't know if this is a peculiarly Liverpool thing, because I can only talk from my first-hand experiences, but I've known this to happen on several occasions.

As for your 'didn't they think of everyone else' point? Someone getting in on a blag ticket does not per se stop anyone who has a genuine ticket from entering the ground. The problem yesterday was the sheer weight of numbers, brought about by the Athens authorities' inability (or more from my experience it was a complete unwillingness) to prevent counterfeit tickets gaining access to the ground, and more laughably allowing the ingress of people who had no tickets whatsoever and were almost literally just waltzing through the checkpoints. I'll show you a copy of what people were gaining access to the grounds with if I can find my data cable for my phone (or scan them in at work tomorrow) to further explain the sheer ludicrousness of it all.

Imagine if you will that Bolton get to the UEFA Cup Final in the next couple of years, and are given an allocation of 15,000 tickets for the final. Are you telling me that only 15,000 Bolton fans would be in that stadium come kick off? I think we all know that that would not be the case. Each one of us has a line that we'd be willing to go up to in terms of our own moral values to try and gain entry to the stadium - whether that's buying a ticket from a tout, wittingly or unwittingly using a forged ticket, attempting to sneak in if at all possible, scaling a wall, organising a break with scores of their friends in the hope of overwhelming the stewards/police, getting inside a Trojan horse, whatever!

So I am right in thinking that more fans had knowingly got into the ground than was deemed safe by the authorities.

Therefore if a tragedy had occurred to over crowding as at say Hillsborough that would have been ok then? Or would you only blame the ones that 'forced' their way in and not the ones that had 'blagged' their way in? Or would it simply be the authorities fault?

I would have thought that the one club in the world where the supporters would have learned from the tragedies that its fans had previously suffered - it would have been Liverpool's!

I have great respect for you Blurred but if you - who are clearly educated and articulate - cannot see the difference and defend to the hilt the acts of these selfish idiots then no wonder tragedies will continue to occur at football grounds.

I know you say it happens to all clubs - but some how I do not think it happens on anything like the scale it does with Liverpool. I have seen no reports of Milan fans doing anything similar - and I would assume it would have been the same method of entry for their fans?

There are many clubs throughout Europe with large followings – however it seems to me that only Liverpool as so many problems – which apparently are all down to the host club, host officials, police, etc – and never those loveable scouse rogues!

[blurred]

Stadium free-for-all that could have been a ticket for disaster - Tony Evans in Athens.

All over Athens in the early hours of yesterday morning, small groups of Liverpool fans were meeting up and commiserating with each other. There were a lot of hugs, rueful smiles and the same words exchanged again and again. “It’s all right. We only lost. Nobody died.”

Three hours after the game, Liverpool fans were much more ebullient than the AC Milan supporters. Scouse laughter was ringing around the bars of the Greek capital as thoughts turned to home and next season. Memories of Hillsborough, where defeats on the pitch were put into perspective in the most horrible manner, ensure that there will be few tears after Liverpool lose a mere match.

But yesterday morning there was little to laugh about. William Gaillard, Uefa’s mouthpiece, has laid the blame for the chaos outside the Olympic Stadium squarely on the shoulders of Liverpool fans. Uefa does not need the help of anyone to make a mess of an event, but the controversy throws up a number of questions for Liverpool supporters and, sadly, gives ammunition to those whose version of events in Sheffield on April 15, 1989 involves ticketless fans storming the gates.

Yes, some people wearing “Hillsborough Justice Campaign” badges probably rushed police lines yesterday in the quest to get into the ground. On the face of it, that would appear to be a crass conflict of ideologies. However, there are few parallels between Wednesday in Athens and that dreadful Saturday in Yorkshire.

In 1989, there were plenty of tickets available for the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. Lord Justice Taylor’s report into the tragedy found that the design of the terracing was fatally flawed and that South Yorkshire police made a series of mistakes that led to the 96 deaths.

Liverpool fans were not to blame for the disaster and those who, like me, stepped over dead bodies that day resent any suggestion that we were the guilty parties. Sadly, few people remember the Taylor Report. They do recall the stories of drunken, ticketless fans that dominated the media in the aftermath of the disaster, however. The stories were untrue, but people still believe the ludicrous lies that had us stealing from our own dead.

Athens was very different. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the ticket allocation – and few could argue that 17,000 was enough to satisfy Liverpool fans’ demand – there were people at the stadium who were determined to get into the match by whatever means necessary.

In recent years, there have been a number of incidents – mostly unreported – where Liverpool supporters have charged turnstiles in massive numbers, setting up dangerous situations.

At Stamford Bridge in the Champions League semi-final two years ago, a very dangerous crush ensued when Scousers broke through the gates. Away to PSV Eindhoven in the quarter-final this season, there were frightening moments outside the ground and the behaviour of ticketless fans provoked some harsh exchanges on the internet forums.

It is a problem that will not go away. “Bunking-in” is not just the last resort of the desperate fan; there are a substantial minority among Liverpool’s travelling support who see getting into a game without paying as a badge of honour. A number of books written about the experiences of Liverpool fans in the 1970s and 1980s have mythologised bunking-in and the younger generation, seeking to emulate their elders, have little compunction about sneaking into a ground and occupying someone else’s seat.

Mostly, they are young Scousers – and those with out-of-town accents and tickets who try to get their seats back can find themselves in unpleasant confrontations.

As the game moves upmarket and seeks to keep its traditional constituency outside the stadium while the corporate fans feast like kings inside, bunking-in will become a bigger problem.

Some Liverpool supporters even see it as a guerrilla act, the ultimate revenge of the disenfranchised fan. Priced out of the game? That’s OK, it’s free to the bunkers and they have the added satisfaction of making sure that they are not putting any money in the filthy-rich coffers of football’s billionaires. It is a class war statement for some.

But what they forget is that such behaviour gives the police licence to crack heads – and invariably, like on Wednesday night, it’s not the Scallies and bunkers who suffer. Having seen their lines swamped earlier in the day, the police were taking no chances with a second humiliation and took out their frustration on people with tickets.

That horde swarming over the gates are the flip side of the fanaticism we saw at Anfield against Barcelona and Chelsea. The bunkers want to get into the ground and all the police in Athens could not stop them. It might take a disaster to do that.

If it does, then it will be a very different tragedy to Hillsborough. Because then we – the men and boys whose desperation to get into the game makes us take wild risks – will have to shoulder the blame. And that’s too high a price to pay to see a football match.

Tony Evans is Deputy Football Editor of The Times and author of Far Foreign Land: Pride and Passion the Liverpool Way .

Largely fair and largely truthful - I would dispute the 'massive' numbers at Chelsea or PSV as mentioned in his report, although there were issues at those two games.

[Batman]

To be honest blurred, most of us have eyes and ears and can formulate our own opionions, and in general Pool fans acted like shits.

No mention of bother around the Milan end..........none whatsoever.

It isn't the first time, and it won't be the last - I'm sure that the reason behind the peaceful home games has a lot to do with your daytripper support (ie Irish and Thai etc) that we always see when we travel over to your place, and perhaps it is the real knobheads who go away.

To criticise Pool fans for making the situation worse is one thing, but to then go on to admit to exacerbating it by turning a blind eye to folk jumping the gates is nothing short of ridiculous.
A terrible analogy would be to call Rooney a fat c*nt (justifiable), whilst chomping on a burger.

Let it drop