The Truth about the fan experience in UEFA competitions

The appalling scenes outside last weekend's Champions League Final were not a one-off. The reality of attending games organised by UEFA is far from the slick marketing hype

The reality of the fan experience in European football competitions is that it is too often a squalid, unpleasant and downright dangerous one. In the aftermath of yet another game organised under the auspices of UEFA in which scenes that simply should not happen unfolded, it’s time to call it very clearly. What happened at the 2022 Champions League Final wasn’t a one-off. Poor treatment of fans and poor organisation is systemic and it has been going on for years. And the responsibility rests with competition organiser UEFA.

I’m wary of snap judgements and trenchant takes designed to catch the eye before the brain is engaged. Especially in light of some of the disgraceful but sadly predictable nonsense being spouted after last weekend’s Champions League Final. And especially in the knowledge of how the social media cesspit makes most reasoned discussion almost impossible. But the opinion I’ve expressed above is no snap judgement. It’s based on 30 years’ experience of travelling around Europe following my club, and by eight years as a supporter rep.

These are some of the things I have experienced or had to deal with.

• Being held in stadiums for over two hours after games finish.

• Leaving the stadium after a long hold back and walking an hour back into town in the pouring rain because all public transport has closed.

• Finding toilets that are little more than holes in the ground with faeces smeared up the walls.

• Lack of basic refreshment facilities in away ends.

• Being kettled by police.

• Being kettled and batoned by police and stewards.

• Disorganisation and lack of communication leading to crushing at gates.

• Dealing with fans who have been tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed while being crushed at gates.

• Viewing the game through filthy, smeared perspex screens or netting that makes following play difficult.

• Being subjected to intrusive and invasive personal searches.

• Being required to turn up hours before the game with ID to collect tickets and then make a return journey to the same venue.

• Being required to carry original passport documents at all times.

• Arguing for common sense to be applied to bag policies for fans who have travelled long distances over several days.

• Avoiding local police “taxing” operations where passports are checked, confiscated and a charge made for their return.

• Being allocated the worst seats or sections in the stadium.

• Being subject to ticket price hiking.

• Disabled supporters being batoned by riot police.

• A complete ban on the presence of fans wearing colours or “behaving like a fan” within the boundaries of a town where a match is being played on the day of the game.

In 2019, I went to watch my team, Tottenham Hotspur, play in the Champions League Final. The showpiece game of European football. The jewel in UEFA’s crown. Some of my experiences were atypical as, at the time, I was co-chair of the Supporters’ Trust, and we were involved in many aspects connected with getting our fans to and from the game, working alongside our Club, the FSA and Football Supporters Europe. But I’m setting this down to give an indication of what fans face when attending UEFA’s showpiece event.

• In the runup to the game, we spent a lot of time pushing for a greater number of tickets to go to fans of the competing clubs, and challenging the eye-watering prices of some tickets. We had limited success.

• Two sets of English fans going to the same city for a major final was a major travel logistics challenge. We spent a lot of time working out deals to ensure fans could attend, as did our colleagues at Liverpool’s Spirit of Shankly. Both Clubs, to be fair, were also extremely helpful.

• Many fans take a chance through sites such as Booking.com to book accommodation in advance, but premises regularly cancel bookings and hike prices when they know demand will be high. Finding and affording accommodation is a major worry for many fans ahead of these games.

• On the night before the game we had to deal with the aftermath of Spanish riot police attacking a bar where Spurs fans were drinking.

• On the day of the game, a major worry was the need to carry match tickets for which no duplicates would be issued if they were lost or stolen. So you’re constantly on edge as theft and pickpocketing is rife.

• On the approach to the stadium, local criminals who had obtained UEFA bibs and fake stewarding accreditation were asking to check tickets and then running off with them. Police were simply not interested in dealing with this.

• For this game at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium, fans had to get through an outer cordon onto the main concourse before entering the stadium, enabling the area immediately around the ground to be secured for ticket holders. UEFA had promised water would be available but, in 40-degree temperatures, the water ran out. There was no cover. Fans were passing out.

• Inside the ground it was also clear that drinking water had run out. The mobile hawkers we had been promised would be dispensing water were nowhere to be seen.

• We were still aware of one flight full of our fans that had been delayed taking off, with those fans almost certain to miss kick-off. In the end, they got to the ground with the aid of a police escort fast-tracking their journey from the airport, but they missed the first 15 minutes.

• Signposting to the stadium from local transport links was inadequate, and as crowds built up, even the VIP guests were being seen to abandon cars and walk.

• Five minutes into the game I was being texted reports of one of our fans being beaten up by Spanish police in a toilet on the upper tier. I spent a large part of the first half trying to contact Club stewarding staff so that this could be addressed. (Clubs are allowed to take their own stewards, which is helpful, but they have no jurisdiction inside another club’s ground).

• After the game, we again had to negotiate poor signposting and inadequate exit processes.

• We were directed to a Metro station that was closed, leaving thousands of fans milling about on a major road. We didn’t get back into the town centre until around 1am.

That experience is not unusual. Talk to fans at a clutch of major finals and they will tell you the same stories. As I’ve said, these are not one-off events, and when the same problems happen at event after event run by the same organisation, questions have to be asked about that organisation’s ability to deliver.

Of course, there are some factors beyond UEFA’s control, the most obvious being the behaviour of police. In Spain and France particularly, the police seem to be a law to themselves and operate on a default setting of full force response – deploying batons and tear gas far too readily. There are numerous reports of poor policing tactics across Europe, and while I have no wish to fuel any Brexitesque arguments about the merits of the UK versus the European approach, the fact is that the majority of UK police have a far better approach to the dynamics of crowd control than their European counterparts.

But UEFA still has a duty of care to its customers, and the only conclusion I can draw after three decades of experience is either that it is incapable of carrying out that duty, or it simply doesn’t feel it is important enough. So something has to change.

The immediate aftermath of the events surrounding the 2022 Final has been both depressing and then potentially encouraging. The first response of the bodies who staged the event was to blame the fans. Because problems in football are always the fans’ fault. Problems with fans of English clubs in Europe in football also come with much historical baggage connected with past bad behaviour, meaning that ‘blame the fans’ has helped various authorities avoid having to confront any issues relating to their own culpability for many years. And it’s also led a good number of English club fans to conclude that we will never get a fair deal. All which leads to what is at best a sullen standoff and at worst ratchets up tensions.

What’s been encouraging is how quickly the blame the fans narrative has been shot down. Within hours of UEFA and the French authorities reaching for the standard getout, accounts from eye-witnesses, journalists, UK police observers and the UK government had countered that. And efforts to pin the blame on Liverpool’s fans finally fell apart when reports of Real Madrid fans experiencing similar problems emerged.

Any fan of an English club who has ever travelled to a game in Europe should also have recognised a pattern and empathised with the experiences of those at the game – due to what I have said above. But a combination of tribalism, the cesspit of social media and a particularly unpleasant attitude to Liverpool fans in particular led to the emergence of a lot of self-appointed experts seizing on fragments of information to reinforce existing prejudices. I have recently given up attempting to engage in rational debate on Twitter, and nothing I saw in the days following the Final changed my willingness to stick to that decision.

The FSA and Football Supporters Europe have spoken clearly and well on the issues, with FSE’s Ronan Evain being particularly blunt about some of the nonsense the French authorities attempted to peddle before they had to backtrack. But the efforts of fan organisations are undermined by the determination of too many fans to pursue tribal agendas. Rivalry is part of the game, but a failure to recognise that what happened to Liverpool and Real Madrid fans could have happened to any of us – because so many similar incidents have happened to many of us – makes us all losers.

The investigation that’s now been announced provides an opportunity to face up to and confront some fundamental problems. UEFA clearly does not rank ensuring fans have a safe and enjoyable experience at the match as a priority. That must change. So too must the attitude of police forces who see themselves not as servants of the people but as imposers of order – although that involves tackling more deep-seated problems. And finally, ordinary fans have to be better at realising the common problems we all face override tribal rivalries.  

The French authorities are now taking a lot of, very well-deserved, flak for their initial response. This is allowing UEFA to avoid the spotlight. In hundreds of matches over many years, that body has overseen conditions that simply should not be experienced by the customers of any business. And for some years now, the experience of attending its flagship final has fallen far short of all the hype. Things have got so bad that the reality is now intruding upon the slick marketing operation. Even those with vested interests in preserving the myth of the football family enjoying an elite event are unable to ignore the grim reality.

If UEFA was not among the world’s most hubristic bodies, it would be facing up to the need for fundamental change in the way it operates. But no one has any confidence that it will. I was one of the fan reps who sat in a meeting with that organisation’s President and heard some very fine words about how UEFA valued the fans. This latest fiasco proves UEFA doesn’t value the fans, other than as compliant extras in its moneymaking machine. We need to see fundamental change if attending games organised by UEFA isn’t to be seen as, at best, an endurance test.

It is quite an achievement to make something that can bring so much joy to so many people such an unpleasant and dangerous experience.

Header photo © Martin Cloake