Kenny Dalglish praises Liverpool fans amid CL final chaos
The Champions League final was put off because of crowd problems, and Liverpool fan Kenny Dalglish has come to their defense.
Kenny Dalglish
, former
Liverpoolplayer, thinks that the news about crowd problems at the postponed
Champions League final
has "totally exonerated" Reds fans.
Saturday's final, which
Real Madridwon 1-0 at the Stade de France, started twice later than planned because of UEFA. The governing body of European football pushed back the start time by 15 minutes at first, saying it was for "security reasons." The two teams came back for a second warm-up at 21:05 local time. The game didn't start until 21:36, which was 36 minutes later than planned.
Liverpool fans said that the police were too harsh outside the stadium. They thought that tear gas or pepper spray had been used on fans. A number of British-based journalists said that they saw French authorities outside the stadium be poorly organized and act in an unprofessional way.
The Premier League club then asked for an official investigation, while UEFA said the delays were caused by fans trying to get in with "fake tickets." Gerald Darmanin, the French minister of the interior, also said that "thousands" of Reds fans tried to use fake tickets or force their way into the stadium.
Spirit of Shankly, a group of Liverpool fans, accused UEFA of "shambolic mismanagement," and Dalglish backed up the Reds fans. "If you read all the news stories, I think the fans are completely innocent, and I think the French authorities should be a little embarrassed by how they acted," Dalglish told
Sky Sports
.
"If it's normal, that's fine, but our fans have never done anything but cheer for the football team." Some fans said the problems in Paris reminded them of Hillsborough, where 97 people died in a crush at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final.
Dalglish wouldn't compare what happened in France to what happened at the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at the home stadium of Sheffield Wednesday, but he did say that the problems in Paris were bad. "If that's how bad it was, you can imagine how sad it must be," he said. "But I don't think you should compare Hillsborough to anything else."
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