The fans of Liverpool FC are categorically not the worst behaved in Europe. The recent UEFA ‘independent’ report is a case of desperate men trying to save their skins and their careers. This is a classic instance of a powerful organisation using red herring and smoke screen tactics to deflect attention away from their own failings and incompetence, by turning the spotlight onto the antics of an equally desperate, but fortunately far less powerful ‘bunch of scallies,’ in the hope that this will obscure the fact that they (UEFA) remain incapable of running and organising their own flagship event, and that they repeatedly put profit and personal favour ahead of any sense of wider public purpose. This is the real issue, not the behaviour, of a thousand or so urchins. What UEFA have produced is a trumped up charge sheet. Some of it fabricated, some of it taken out of context, some of it wilfully exaggerated, some of it true, most of it distorted to suit the UEFA agenda. It is however far too convenient in its timing. This is a case of ticking boxes and counting things, so as to produce statistics that suit UEFA’s current purpose – the discrediting of the fans of Liverpool FC in the hope that it will focus attention on the bad behaviour of a relatively powerless and insignificant minority, while the powerful well resourced organisation that has just made a mess of its own flagship event, escapes any critical scrutiny, - a classic, but all too transparent, and fatally flawed public relations strategy. That is the real story - UEFA’s continuing incompetence and intransigence and their increasingly desperate attempts to cover it up. (PAY ATTENTION).

Why would they go to such lengths in discrediting LFC fans? Well LFC fans are queuing up to sue them, after they were refused entry, as genuine ticket holders, to the ‘champions league’ final. Likewise they have been victims of and witnesses to ineptitude on a vast scale in Athens last week. The solution in this instance has been to play the public relations card and throw mud. These are people (UEFA officials) who are on the whole so immune from wider public scrutiny, so divorced from the thinking of ‘ordinary football fans’ and so used to having their own way , that they believe anything is within their power, while their grasp on reality is tenuous to say the least. (READ PROFESSOR JOHN SUGDEN’S EXCELLENT ACCOUNT OF UEFA). Like all good bureaucrats however they are capable of massaging statistics and briefing journalists. Unfortunately, for them they’ve just bitten off more than they can chew. They have decided to take on, and in the process besmirch, a set of fans who can tie their own club in knots, are capable of have them begging for mercy, while winning very important football games of their own accord. The fans of LFC are the very definition of fan power and UEFA know it. No wonder they are on the war path, given that their agenda is to disenfranchise genuine fans and create a corporate friendly game. The fans of Liverpool FC are their most determined foes in opposing that agenda. We saw it one form in Istanbul. We saw aspects of it in another and sometimes less commendable and desirable form in Athens.

Issues have emerged from Athens. However, the most important amongst those issues is not the anti-social behaviour of Liverpool supporters. I won’t bother to apologise for that. It is a problem that will be dealt with in due course, by the rank and file – mark my words. We are aware of it, but as an issue facing football, it is relatively small potatoes. Yet from the news bulletins, following UEFA’s latest briefing, one would be forgiven for thinking it’s the biggest issue facing European football. Enough! We urge all journalists to recognise that UEFA are engaged in a red herring – a smoke screen exercise, designed to deflect attention away from their own incompetence. Of course we could point to, the sporting behaviour of Liverpool supporters in remaining behind en masse to applaud Milan as they lifted the trophy, when the current trend is for losers to depart, or the fact that several hundred travelled to the home ground of Olympiakos to pay tribute to those who perished at Gate 7 in Piraeus on the day of the European cup final. Best to embellish the antics of a minority, after all this helps in the real agenda, which is to obscure and prevent the following questions from being asked:

Just how do UEFA reach decisions about what constitutes a suitable final venue?

What criteria are used and applied in reaching such a decision?

Who decides how tickets are distributed and what criteria are applied?

What consideration is given to public order, public safety and wider public purpose in ticket allocation decision making and venue selection?

How are such considerations factored into the decision making process on ticket distribution if at all?

What percentage of tickets are used for corporate and sponsorship purposes?

Is it more important to maximise spectator capacity paying due to consideration of public safety and comfort, or is advertising revenue the be all and end all, and how should any ‘trade-offs’ be best managed?

What is the ideal percentage of tickets to give to each finalist from a UEFA perspective?

What are the most important factors to be considered when reaching decisions about ticketing and venues?

What research is undertaken about the suitability of potential venues?

What advice is imparted to local authorities about managing crowd control and access to the stadium?

How do UEFA try to ensure that paying spectators have a seat that is accessible with a clear view of the pitch?

Is any research undertaken or advice imparted to ensure that paying spectators have access to catering, refreshment and toilet facilities?

How do UEFA view access to refreshments and programmes from a customer care and revenue generating perspective?

How significant is stadium accessibility as an issue in venue selection?

What does UEFA see as its overall role/ function in relation to the staging of the European cup final?

How much revenue does the European cup final generate for UEFA?

What is the percentage breakdown of this revenue?

What liaison takes place with police from the cities of participating teams and how is any dialogue acted upon, or factored into ‘on the ground’ decision making?

How is it possible for several thousand genuine ticket holders to be refused entry to the ground for their own flagship event?

How is it possible for those without tickets to gain entry? How is it possible for those with tickets to gain entry without having shown their ticket? Should it be possible to walk into a venue without showing a ticket?

Should venues have proper access points, where tickets are vetted and a portion of them retained?

How and why might it be important to have a way of recording numbers of spectators entering the ground?

Of course, the release of the report highlighting Liverpool supporters is not coincidental. It come a mere ten days after the biggest UEFA organised fiasco of modern times. A fiasco that revealed the flaws and incompetence that are endemic to that organisation and that raised a series of important questions that need to be asked. UEFA needs to called to account and heads need to roll. In the meantime a report, that is trivialising and obscuring the real issues, shapes the headlines and the news agenda.

Read on and rectify that…..

Athens: A Week on

A week on and after further reflection on the shambolic scenes outside the Olympic Stadium in Athens, I have had time to reflect and put the events into some sort of perspective. Now the anger at the behaviour of some of our supporters has subsided, I can see it for what it was, mindless, anti social, despicable, but not the main story by any means.

Reports suggest that entry gates 1 -9 were relatively quiet for periods, while gates 34, 35 etc were mayhem. All of which is suggestive of inadequate signage and stewarding. We breezed in through gates 1-9 about 9.15-9.30pm local time. But we approached from the Athens Mall and Nea Moussa metro rather than Eirini. Yes we had to come through the numerous farcical check points and yes it got more congested and chaotic as we got closer, and yes we got separated, but I was never crushed, never felt in danger and the whole process once we got through the first check point can’t have lasted much longer than 15 minutes. I flashed my ticket a couple of times, but they weren’t really looking. Nobody ever examined it. The ticket received one token scan with a hand held purple scanner, but this was half hearted and the scanner was nearly a foot away from the ticket. Essentially, I just walked into the ground, full ticket still in tact, it only having received a cursory inspection. There were no turnstiles, or at least not functioning ones that counted people entering the ground and that acted as a proper ticket check point.

Once in the ground there were no accessible toilets in my part of the ground, there was no food or drink available that I could see. I couldn’t get to my seat, but had to stand at the front in the moat of piss, upper tier, near gate 2, central behind the goal. I paid £57 for the privilege. No other ‘industry’ would treat its paying customers in this way. The reality is the treatment of everyone entering that ground in the Liverpool section behind the goal was inhumane. We were treated like cattle and true to form some of our lot behaved in a fashion unworthy of animals. Once you were in, you were trapped, no where to go, not even the luxury of an accessible toilet. Convicted murders receive better treatment, yet we had paid good money to be on the receiving end of such well executed contempt. This was after all European football’s showpiece premier event and we were used to it. UEFA have form in this department, but I have to say the Attaurk was luxuriant by comparison, it was relatively spacious and it had functioning toilets. This was closer to Heysel in terms of incompetence, ineptitude and an inadequate venue in which people were able to enter at will and en masse without showing tickets. Fortunately this time the supporters were on the whole better behaved, at least the majority were.

Despite claims to the contrary – I hear there were baton charges at the Milan end too. I believe it was full beyond capacity too, although not to the extent of the Liverpool end. I did not see any crowd disorder, charging of fences at the Liverpool end, but that did happen. I did see a stadium completely ill equipped for staging a match of that magnitude and a local police force that understood nothing about crowd control, management or safety.

If you provide each finalist with only a quarter of the tickets in the knowledge that the demand is going to be at least twice that, and when in one of the Cities concerned, football is practically a religion, and you then decide to hold the game in a Stadium in which it is pretty much possible to walk in without a ticket – then THAT is the real issue. That is systematic and institutionalized incompetence, in which concern for favour and profit outweighs any sense of public duty, or responsibility. There may have been a thousand, possibly 3% of one teams supporters behaving like the street rats they are. Despicable as that is, that isn’t really the issue here. It’s a sideshow, a convenient UEFA smokescreen, a veritable red herring. But it’s a much smaller part of the equation than it first appears. Of course, I didn’t think this two-three days ago, or on Wednesday when we encountered some of said street rats on the metro. I was livid upon hearing the stories of the behaviour of some of our supporters and having sampled aspects of it, but now I have had the opportunity to sit back and think about it dispassionately and objectively, I can see the shape of the forest, rather than a few individual trees.

If we had 5,000 extra in our end, it was because the opportunity was there. How many of those extra bunked in for the first time and would not normally dream of doing that? An awful lot, if reports of first time bunkers and ordinarily law abiding citizens are to be believed. Where they irresponsible? Undoubtedly, but they were also people who were fundamentally decent, but desperate to see the game, and they made up the majority of that 5,000. They felt wronged and short changed by the allocation. Then the righting of the perceived injustice was practically handed to them on a plate. It would take extremely worthy, disciplined individuals to resist such temptation. The majority of the human race simply isn’t cut from such cloth. Ultimately, they turned up out of desperation and found that they stood a very good chance of being able to walk into the stadium without a ticket due to the ineptitude of UEFA, the Greeks and the inadequacy of the stadium. In some cases the Greeks appeared to aid and abet them. And what’s more after their treatment by LFC these people felt justified in doing this. Not that this should condone what they did, far from it. But it does explain how a series of exceptional circumstances came together and combined to bring about events of that Wednesday evening. Such an account is far more useful than being moralistic about individual responsibility. When we think seriously about the issue of causation and the evidence, rather than anecdotal eye witness accounts and experiences, these are the facts, isolated emotive personal experiences aside. And they are far more disturbing and worrying than any individual horror stories, troubling though they are. Those facts to recap are as follows:

1. UEFA’s official allocation to the clubs is very low at around a quarter of the total capacity each, due to corporate handouts. (Add to that general myopia and misunderstanding of the modern game of football in Europe – it’s life blood and the psychology surrounding it, despite supposedly being the game’s governing body, charged with the health of the game and the welfare of those attending its flagship event. Profits and favours appear to come before any sense of public purpose, welfare and safety).
2. Liverpool Football Club treat their own fans with contempt by ensuring that 40% of the allocation goes elsewhere, including sponsors and corporate clients, rather than to ordinary fans and season ticket holders.
3. The bad feeling amongst Liverpool fans reaches an all time high evident in a demonstration against the club hierarchy, probably the first of its kind in a 115 year history.
4. The stadium itself is set 7,000 below capacity due to UEFA advertising agreements.
5. The stadium itself also has a relatively low capacity of 62, 500, for such a big game.
6. The stadium has no turnstiles.
7. On the night of the game those ticketless and angry because of some of the above arrive at the Stadium and mingle with those with tickets. Finding inadequate checks and little or no stewarding they head in the general direction of the stadium.
8. Poor filtering, security and stewarding enable most of them to get with one checkpoint of the stadium
9. Some Liverpool fans behave badly, snatch tickets and charge the gates.
10. Others find they are able to walk in to the stadium very easily without showing their ticket.
11. The ground is overcrowded with lots of ticketless fans inside, no toilets and no food or drink available. UEFA has sent fans into an ill quipped stadium, that has become unpleasant and dangerous due to the disorganization outside, the bad design of the stadium and a relatively small percentage of supporters behaving in a lawless fashion.
12. Now that the ground is overcrowded some genuine ticketholders are refused entry then attacked by the police.

However, despite all of this the 700- 1,000 or so vermin who behaved badly have all the headlines. This small army of unruly and relatively unimportant foot soldiers, with little in the way of power, or resources, but plenty of anti-social habbits, receive all the attention and limelight, while UEFA, LFC and the Greek authorities wriggle off the hook. Yet the behaviour of these powerful organisations has been far more crooked and far more inept, in a far more systematic, institutionalized and serious fashion, than several hundred to a thousand street rats showing their true colours.

Nevertheless, a message to Liverpool’s supporter base - the mass bunking has gone too far, IT HAS TO STOP. And we need a vigilante war against our street rats to keep them in check, because it’s the only language they understand. It’s not going to happen though without action. Neither are UEFA, LFC or the police/ stewards, ground safety people in other European countries going to get their act together. That’s going to take another tragedy and more deaths. I will ask my wife to pray that I am wrong. It’s probably our best hope.