Five friends lost £12,000 in a Champions League "nightmare", which saw them pepper-sprayed, burgled and their car stolen.
The group of Liverpool fans travelled to watch the match from a dedicated Fan Zone in the Place de la Nation in Paris. But Sam Houghton, 23, his twin brother Jake Houghton, 23, Joe Wells, 24, his brother Tom Wells, 21, and Michael Kynaston, 23, suffered a series of hellish experiences.
They say French police sprayed them with tear gas unprovoked as fans left the area. On returning to their accommodation they then found it had been broken into and ransacked.
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The friends then discovered the car they had driven there in had been stolen from the driveway it was parked on. It meant they couldn't return home in the way they had planned via the Euro Tunnel.
In total, they lost nearly £12,000, including the replacement flights they needed to get home. Sam, who owned the stolen Ford Focus, said: “I’ve still not gotten over it, it was absolutely shocking – I don’t know what to say about it all.
“Obviously everyone’s pleased we’re all okay and we’ve just lost stuff but with clothes, cash and car, and including getting back it was near enough £12,000. If the police would have been way, way better it would have really helped, the police wouldn’t help at all and it felt like it was because we were Liverpool fans.”
The group, all from Chester, had been planning the trip of a lifetime and left for Paris at 3.30pm on Friday, May 27. They were expecting to be on the way to France via the Euro Tunnel at 10.20pm - however their trip was immediately beset with problems as their train was delayed until 1.30am, meaning they didn’t make it to the city until 7am on Saturday.
They left their accommodation at 12.30 on Saturday afternoon, arriving at the dedicated Fan Zone in the city centre at 1.30, and say they enjoyed peacefully watching the match with other Liverpool supporters. However, their nightmare started when they were sprayed with tear gas by French police as they left the area despite there being no obvious provocation.
After making their way out of the area and catching an Uber back to their apartment, their holiday took another turn for the worse when they realised their apartment had been broken into – and Sam’s car had been stolen. Sam said: "Myself and four friends travelled down to Paris for the Champions League final - we travelled via car and Euro tunnel however the tunnel was 4 hours delayed, resulting in us arriving in Paris at 7am, all on no sleep.
“We were staying quite close to the stadium and got a half-hour train into Paris where the fan zone was – the day was absolutely fine, there were no problems at all. When we left the apartment at 12.30pm on Saturday, a man drove up to us on a moped and asked if we were going to the match – we said yes and he drove off quite quickly which we thought was weird.
“We got to the Paris fan zone at about 1.30pm and were there for the day, the match kicked off at 9pm French time and it was all fine – then as we were just walking out the French police sprayed us with tear gas. There were thousands of people in the area – it was big but it was an enclosed space and you just had to cover your eyes and mouth and get out quick, all five of us were affected.
“We were all just walking out and then suddenly our eyes started to hurt, we realised what had happened and got out of there quite quickly. We got an Uber back to the accommodation at 1am and were dropped off at the end of the road – a couple of us walked ahead and someone shouted back that the gates were open and the car wasn’t on the driveway.
“It took a moment to sink in, we walked around and saw the door was open and then went inside and saw the mess. We were quite shocked and scared, it was horrible really - immediately we got on the phone to the police and they weren’t great at all.
“The language barrier was quite difficult, one of them said we had to walk to the police station at 1.30am and another said we’ll send someone out – we waited for a bit but they didn’t come so we called again and they said we had to walk over to them at 3am. Tom called the British Embassy and they didn’t help either, they told us to talk to the police – we were scared for our lives walking over there.
“When we did arrive at the police station, we were all wearing Liverpool shirts – they got annoyed with us and told us to come back in the morning, we also got quite annoyed and once it had calmed down, we could explain how serious it was and they ended up taking a statement.
“We felt like the police were no help at all and we were a target because of the Liverpool shirts we were wearing. The loss of the car meant we couldn’t get home and so with very little money we had to book a hotel and flight for the Monday via Milan.
“We flew from Paris at 7am to Milan, then Milan to London, and then a train to Chester – with the value of the car included we have lost nearly £12,000 this weekend.”
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