There should be a law about treating fans better… and it turns out there is

While the Independent Review into the chaos at last year's Champions League Final rightly excoriates UEFA, it also reveals a valuable tool for supporter groups – the Saint-Denis Convention

The Independent Review Report into the 2022 Champions League Final in Paris has already received wide coverage. It not only gives a damning verdict of UEFA, but also of the French Football Federation, the French police and senior state officials. The report, which I’ll call the Review from now on, is 220 pages long and meticulously assembled. And it is worth emphasising some of its conclusions again.

But before I do that, I want to focus on one particular aspect of the report, something that gives supporter organisations a firm basis on which to organise and assert themselves to ensure fans can safely enjoy sporting events. Because it turns out there is an international, legally binding treaty to help them.

This is important because, for years, supporter groups have had to struggle to even put forward questions and engage with the planning of major events. We have had to seek permission and operate on a grace and favour basis when all along those who attempted to brush us off had the obligation not only to speak to us but to actively ensure that we could safely enjoy the events they organised.

No one who has had any experience of attending European club competition games will fail to recognise the sheer lack of regard for the supporter experience that runs through much of the detail in the report’s findings. Perhaps the most damning of all the Report’s conclusions was that “The Senior management of UEFA Events SA used ‘delegation and deference’ to try to avoid accountability.” ‘Delegation and deference’ is the framework actively adopted by UEFA that allows it to avoid responsibility for the bad stuff and claim credit – while of course banking the cash – for the good stuff. Under international law, they should never have been able to do so.

We need to go back to the summer of 2016 and the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament, for it was during that competition that the Council of Europe Convention on an Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports Events was launched at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis. It produced an agreement known as the Saint-Denis Convention which entered into force on 1 November 2017.

This next bit gets technical, but it is important to clearly establish the foundations, so bear with me.

To quote the Review, “The aim of the Saint-Denis Convention is to provide a safe, secure, and welcoming environment at football matches and other sports events with an international dimension. In order to achieve this, Parties shall:

a. Adopt an integrated, multi-agency and balanced approach towards safety, security and service, based on an ethos of effective local, national and international partnerships and cooperation;

b. Ensure that all public and private agencies, and other stakeholders, recognise that safety, security, and service provision cannot be considered in isolation and can have a direct influence on delivery of the other two components;

c. Take account of good practices in developing an integrated approach to safety, security and service.”

The Convention is an international treaty and it is binding on its State Parties. It is complimented by four annexes setting out good practice on safety, security and service and the monitoring of delivery of objectives. The Council of Europe’s Standing Committee on Safety and Security at Sports Events (T-S4) emphasises that signatories to the Saint-Denis Convention “must ensure that the recommendations and good practices highlighted in the Saint-Denis Convention and their Annexes are taken into account”.

The Standing Committee further emphasises that the Convention “centres on the established need to develop and implement an integrated multi-agency approach to safety, security and service in connection with football and other sports events with an international dimension, based on comprehensive national and local coordination arrangements and effective, international, national and local partnerships.”

Articles 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the Saint-Denis Convention require provision to be made to ““provide a safe and secure environment for all participants and spectators”, and a “welcoming environment for all sections of society, including children, the elderly and those with disabilities”.

Article 9.2, which is mandatory, specifies approaches to develop “proportionate intervention to prevent the escalation of risk or disorder, [and] effective dialogue with supporters”.

UEFA requires applicants bidding to stage events to “Confirm that you adhere to the Council of Europe Convention on an Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports Events”.

The Saint-Denis Convention applies to sports events with an international dimension. And so European club competition is covered. Adhering to its provisions would mean that the experiences I wrote about in a previous edition were not depressingly familiar to any away fan who has attended a game in European club competition in Europe.

For too long, fan organisations have had to fight even to get permission to be heard. And yet they have had the right to be heard since the Convention came into force in 2016. It seems extraordinary that there would be any dispute over the aspirations contained within the Convention or the desirability of involving organisations representing those attending sporting events in planning for them.

But the conclusions of the Review underline why it is necessary to legislate to achieve what should be standards of common decency and respect. I’m going to quote, with specific reference points, the final Review document to illustrate the point.

In section 1.1.12, we read that “Institutional defensiveness, putting reputation and self-interest above truth and responsibility, prevents progressive change.” We read in 2.14 that “In December 2022, UEFA indicated that they were unhappy with publication of any of their witness interview transcripts, but reached a compromise with the Panel that the transcripts would be published subject to anonymisation of all their staff including senior management (despite the fact that they would be named in the report itself). Subsequently, UEFA has used this anonymisation to justify redaction of questions and answers regarding the evidence given to the French Senate by a senior executive.” And we read in 3.4.6 that “the Panel expresses its concern that a senior representative of UEFA was prepared to set out to the Senate the central role UEFA is said to play in the implementation of the Convention, yet fail to identify its own role in not challenging the policing model or ensuring effective interoperability between stakeholders at its annual flagship event.”

We hear in 5.2.39 that “The safety and security operation systematically excluded key stakeholders who would have been important for improving decision making and communication during the crisis that emerged.” And in 6.2.10 that “The Panel concludes that the public response of UEFA in the aftermath of the problems on the night, and in its subsequent evidence to the Senate was striking in its orientation to protect itself, rather than to seek to ensure that nothing similar can happen in the future.” There was, the review says in 6.2.68 “no crisis management process included in the planning for the UEFA Champions League Final 2022, and that UEFA’s own policy was not operated”.

And we can read in 8.4.1.2 that “the UEFA ‘model’ created a lacuna, whereby no one had proper oversight over the full planning and operational picture, and a particular consequence of this was that there were substantial deficits in joint working between stakeholders, which were not picked-up and remedied”.

While UEFA come out of the review particularly badly, other authorities also bear heavy responsibility for the unacceptable scenes that panned out on the day of the Final. The French Football Federation, French police and senior ministers made serious mistakes and then tried to deflect any blame by pushing the narrative of ticketless fans storming the gates. In 8.1.7 we read that “The Panel concludes that assertions regarding huge numbers of ticketless supporters, and those with fake tickets, have been wrongly inflated and have been stated as fact, to deflect responsibility for the planning and operational failures of stakeholders. This is reprehensible and has involved UEFA, UEFA Events SA, FFF, the Préfecture de Police, Government Officials and French Ministers.”

It is worth also reading the evidence presented in the Appendix to the report, and in particular the account submitted by Chief Inspector Andy Rankine of Merseyside Police. Rankine is an experienced and accredited match day commander who was working at the Final, and his observations are disturbing in what they reveal about the litany of mistakes and incorrect assumptions that left supporters exposed and at risk on the day.

One of the conclusions of the Review (8.4.6.11) is that “The requirement for policing authorities to adopt a supporter engagement approach, and the imperative for effective joint working must be viewed as non-negotiable. References to cultural differences or deference to national systems should not be viewed as relevant factors.”

And yet all too often negotiations continue because supporters are not seen as partners but as passive recipients of what the self-defined great and good want to give us. That these requirements should be legislated for is itself an indication of the problem. Because ensuring customers can enjoy events safely shouldn’t be up for debate. And even in the face of binding legislation, the battle continues.

Reading the Review, it is clear that any sense of culpability for the awful events that occurred around the Final is grudging at best. UEFA still does not accept the buck stops with them, and some UEFA-connected media figures are making laughable attempts to question the independence of the Review. No apology has been given for the statements UEFA published blaming fans. The Préfecture de Police has not accepted overwhelming evidence of failures in the police approach. The request by French authorities to remove reference to the role played by local criminal gangs and UEFA’s agreement to remove any such reference from statements in the aftermath of the Final has not been explained. Nor has the refusal to participate of Real Madrid FC – although it must be emphasised that many Real Madrid fans contributed evidence and statements – and the Mayor of Paris.

Many of us working in the supporter movement in the UK do so at least in part because we remember Hillsborough. We remember that when it happened many of us thought “that could have been me” because we experienced the contempt and lack of regard with which fans were treated. We also remember that too many were ready to believe the worst of football fans – even other football fans like us – and we remember the years of lies and deflection and victim-blaming.

So it was shocking and depressing to see more of the same all these years later. The willingness of the authorities, the almost institutionalised attempts to avoid responsibility are one thing, but when are some among us going to learn? I was appalled, but sadly not surprised, as agendas were wheeled out and familiar tropes aired in the immediate aftermath of events in Paris. But I’ve also heard senior football safety professionals who should know better come out with some of this stuff.

There is a long way to go but we must keep going, and that’s why I’ve spent time setting out what the Saint-Denis Convention can do. Fan organisations need to recognise commonality of experience and piece together the implications. We need to make inserting ourselves into the process of match planning a priority, and base a confident and robust assertion of Saint-Denis at the heart of that.