Kevin Cowley is a 50-year-old driving examiner, a former Metropolitan police officer and a survivor of the Hillsborough disaster. He was in pen three on 15 April 1989, where many of the 97 Liverpool fans were unlawfully killed at the FA Cup semi-final. On Saturday he attended the Champions League final between Jürgen Klopp’s team and Real Madrid at Stade de France. His experience of Uefa’s showpiece event reopened a 33-year-old trauma.
“I am in pieces again,” said Cowley. His voice, breaking with emotion, testifies to that. “It took me years to get over Hillsborough and I feel like I’ve just relived Hillsborough again. Saturday was horrendous. I want to vocalise this because I spent so many years bottling up Hillsborough and that did so much to me that I have to do something this time. I want to talk.”
Cowley purchased a £125 ticket for the final through Liverpool. At 6.15pm on Saturday, two-and-three-quarter hours before the scheduled kick-off, he made his way to the stadium with a friend. “There was already a massive buildup of Liverpool fans trying to get to the ground,” he says. “We thought they must have put something in place to check tickets and bags, as they did in Madrid [for the 2019 Champions League final].
“We arrived at an underpass where the police kettled everybody. It was getting tighter and tighter. I hate crowds, I can’t do them. I have a mechanism for Anfield where I won’t get in that position. I had to climb over a fence because it was getting so tight, along with people of all ages. Then we came to another underpass where the police had parked vans across the road. The sheer weight of people meant I was forced against the bonnet of a police van.”
Steve Rotheram is the Liverpool City Region Mayor. He was also at Hillsborough and was also in Paris on Saturday, having received a ticket from Uefa. He also had to climb a fence on his way up to the stadium. “I had my phone, money, debit cards, ID and match ticket stolen,” says the former MP for Liverpool Walton. “We were directed down a road and after about 400 yards there were two riot vans blocking the way.
“Riot police told us to climb over a fence. I had my jacket in two hands but had to release it from one hand to climb over the fence, and as I was pulling my coat over these dippers went into my pocket. It was literally a second. These were professional gangs. They knew it was rich pickings for them and lots of people got their phones and wallets taken.
“I walked over to the police to tell them I’d had everything stolen and one of them said: ‘Welcome to Paris.’ Some Liverpool fans shouted to them: “He’s our mayor.” Two French lads who had come over to help translated to the gendarme, who were nonplussed until one of the lads Googled me and showed it to a gendarme. He immediately took me through to get a duplicate ticket.”
Once inside the VIP section of the stadium Rotheram asked Gianni Infantino, the president of Fifa, and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to do something about the chaos outside, where fans were being teargassed by police. Infantino was “amenable” but allegedly said “it wasn’t Fifa’s jurisdiction”. Sarkozy was moved on.
Rotheram then spotted Uefa’s president, Aleksander Ceferin. “I politely introduced myself and explained what I’d witnessed and the concerns I had,” he explains. “He seemed oblivious to it. He said to me: ‘We’ve only had three months to organise this, we’ve killed ourselves to get this game on.’ To which I replied: ‘I’m more concerned that people aren’t killed outside’. He indicated that I was being disrespectful. I just couldn’t take my seat and watch the game in the end. I was just devastated at what could have happened outside.”
Cowley was outside for approximately two hours before gaining access. His ticket was for turnstile Y but, with the queue along a fence not moving, he went to turnstile X. “It was like a war zone,” he says. “The crash barriers were on the floor, there was a massive rush on the turnstile by local lads, who were climbing over the fencing and having a full-scale fight on the other side with the stewards and police. There was a lad in a wheelchair who everyone tried to form a bubble around. I kept getting pushed into him and kept apologising.
“I was thinking: ‘It’s happening all over again.’ It was the same thing [as Hillsborough]. I told my mate I was going to walk away but we got to the turnstile, which kept blinking red as if it wasn’t working. I put my ticket through and it didn’t register. The steward said: ‘Just go through.’ So I walked through and this burly steward grabbed me. He was telling me to get out and come back in through Y. Then two police officers came over and started pushing me with their shields. I know what they are trying to do, they are trying to provoke a response. I told them I was a former policeman. The two of them started talking and eventually decided to let me go.”
A big screen in the stadium blamed the “late arrival of fans” for the delayed kick-off. On Monday, French authorities claimed counterfeit tickets on “an industrial scale” were responsible. Neither Cowley nor Rotheram saw any of the supposed “30,000-40,000” fans with counterfeit tickets but both recognised the attempt by authorities to shift the blame on to fans, as was the case with Hillsborough.
“Every time I read the narrative that they are putting out there it just hits me between the eyes with Hillsborough all over again,” says Cowley. “The only thing I take any solace in is the fact that what happened this time was viewed by the world’s press and we’ve got social media and cameras, so they can’t get away with what they are trying to spin. But every time I read this narrative it is like someone is picking at a scab. The French authorities are trying the same thing. It’s revisiting it all again.”
Rotheram, speaking on the phone he was lent by a member of Liverpool’s staff on Saturday, says: “We need to collect a large body of evidence, video recordings and witness testimony.”
He had called for an independent investigation before Uefa announced on Monday night that it had commissioned one. “When somebody is seriously injured or killed in the future, then we can point back to a time like this when everybody should have stuck together to ensure that people are safe at a sporting event,” he says. “Hopefully if we have an independent analysis they won’t be able to scapegoat Liverpool fans or abdicate responsibility.”
