French double down on Liverpool accusation and insist 'industrial scale' ticket fraud at root of Champions League chaos

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The French Government have refused to shoulder any of the blame and incredibly pointed the finger at Liverpool FC for the events outside the ground that overshadowed the Champions League Final in Paris on Saturday.

The showpiece match between Jurgen Klopp's side and Real Madrid at the Stade de France was delayed by more than 35 minutes after police tried to hold back people attempting to force their way into the national stadium.

And the accusation is more than two thirds of the briefs presented by over 62,000 Liverpool supporters had been fakes which has led to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to label the scenes as "deeply upsetting".

But French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Liverpool had issued its supporters with paper tickets, and not electronic, which allowed for the possibility of what he described as a "massive fraud on an industrial scale". "I want to say once again that the decisions taken prevented deaths or serious injury," said Darmanin at an emergency meeting on Monday.He added: "There was massive fraud at an industrial level and organisation of fake tickets, 70 per cent of tickets were fake tickets coming into the Stade de France."More than 2,600 were confirmed by UEFA as non-validated tickets even though they had gone through the first filtering."The massive presence of the fake tickets was the issues which meant there were delays, three times the match was delayed."We had a long meeting where we had exactly the same interpretation with what happened."I would like to express our regret with regard to the organisation of the final because some people were not able to see the whole of the match.