Liverpool chairman Tom Werner has written to French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra and demanded an apology after she accused the club of letting “loose their supporters”.
Liverpool are angry with what they call “the false information” being produced by the French government.
Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan said: “I would just say we are incredibly surprised that someone in that position would make comments in the first place at this point, when we haven’t had adequate time to understand what happened. We were in complete disbelief when we were made aware of them. I think it’s important that folks know that our chairman, Tom Werner, sent a letter to the French minister to articulate our views and is calling for an apology to our fans for those comments.
“We’ve also noted our deep concern about the false information that’s being circulated. Forty thousand people was the number I heard that were at the stadium without tickets. How can that be quantified at this stage before we’ve had an independent and transparent investigation?
“There’ve also been quotes about people with fake tickets, but, again, how do we know all the facts until we’ve had an investigation?”
Hogan spoke on Monday night, minutes after UEFA answered Liverpool’s call to set up an independent report into the shocking events of Saturday night. UEFA say the review will examine “decision making, responsibility and behaviour” of everyone involved and will be conducted by Portugal MP Dr Tiago Brandao Rodrigues.
It capped a fractious day, with Jurgen Klopp bizarrely accused by French authorities of contributing to the chaos at the Champions League Final by encouraging ticketless fans to come to Paris.
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin claimed Klopp is partly to blame for saying “Paris is big enough to go there without a ticket and have a good time”.
Darmanin claimed fraud was at “an industrial level” and that there were between 30,000 and 40,000 fans at the Stade de France either without tickets or with counterfeit ones. He also defended the heavy-handed police response, claiming they saved lives by using tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the Liverpool fans and avoid anyone being crushed.
“There was massive fraud to an industrial level and organisation of fake of tickets because the pre-filtering by the Stade de France and the French football federation saw that 70 per cent of tickets were fake,” he said. “And the Liverpool coach a few days ago had encouraged supporters to come to France even if they didn’t have tickets.
“It is because we have proportional policing techniques that we have managed to avoid death and injury.”
