The Liverpool Echo reported on Monday, citing Agence France-Presse, that French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has finally apologized for wrongly accusing Liverpool fans of being the rioters at the 2022 UEFA Champions League final with a preconceived and incorrect attitude after three years.

According to reports, Darmanin admitted his mistake in an interview with the French YouTube channel, LEGEND.

In the interview, he said that the incident was the most serious judicial error since he became minister.

Darmanin admitted that he should not have believed in the views advocated by others without careful investigation in advance, so that Liverpool fans were treated unfairly and had to endure a series of malicious accusations, and said that he did not blame the fans who are still disappointed with the French government because of this matter.

"Yes, the riot at the Stade de France during the 2022 UEFA Champions League final was a big mistake," Darmanin said.

"Because I didn't do my investigation carefully beforehand, which was a big mistake, and then I was preconceived and easily believed what others said."

"The culprit of the incident was so easy to find out, but I didn't do my due responsibility at the first time. For this, I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to Liverpool fans. Of course, I know that some of them will be disappointed with me and our government because of this, and I don't blame them at all for having such thoughts, because that is reasonable."

"When I first spoke publicly about this incident, I directly said what I was told, that "it was actually the group of fans from England who caused the chaos. But in fact, this statement is completely inconsistent with what happened. "

"The security system we set up is completely unable to cope with such a scene. The riot police wore heavy body armor, long boots, carried large shields and mobile riot gear, which made it difficult for the officers to move around, and these were not suitable for such occasions.

"We completely messed up our deployment on the system. We thought it would be a contest between police and football hooligans, but what we actually got was a group of ticketless thieves who planned to rob fans and break into the stadium to cause trouble. ”

The background of the match involved and details of the controversy

The 2021/22 season UEFA Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid was played at the Stade de France in Paris on May 28, 2022. The match that fans around the world are looking forward to was originally scheduled to kick off at 9:00 pm local time, but UEFA suddenly used the big screen in the stadium to indicate that the match will be delayed by more than half an hour before kick off as there were still a lot of Liverpool fans who hasn't being admitted into the stadium yet. Unexpectedly, until 9:40 p.m. of the local time, when the first half of the game was about to end, there were still a large number of Liverpool fans refused entry for no reason outside the stadium.

During the period, Liverpool left-wing back Kostas Tsimikas also wrote a post complaining that his family was robbed and almost couldn't even enter the stadium.

UEFA's statement was immediately refuted by the Sky Sports' Chief Reporter Kaveh Solhekol, renowned female Liverpool team correspondent Melissa Reddy, and the BBC's resident pundit Gary Lineker, who all released photos, articles and videos to point out that UEFA's security work is not well supervised, and the police used tear gas to abuse fans outside the stadium.

Despite such evidences, UEFA still insisted that many of the Premier League champions' fans who held fake tickets caused riots, and the police were forced to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd to improve the situation.

Since then, the Guardian and former British Minister of State Brandon Lewis also published articles criticizing UEFA's response as deliberately concealing the truths and being irresponsible. After repeated criticisms by Liverpool officials and the British government, UEFA, which finally could no longer stop the criticism, commissioned former Portuguese Minister of Education Tiago Brandão Rodrigues to set up a special committee to conduct an independent investigation  about the incident and provide an independent review report eight months ago.

It is reported that this UEFA Champions League final review report was originally scheduled to be officially released on February 15, 2023 (Wednesday), Asian time, but part of the content has been leaked by UEFA, and even being republished by many British media.

Finally, unable to bear the fierce criticism, UEFA finally admitted that it was the authorities and French government law enforcement agencies that failed to supervise that led to Liverpool fans being unfairly abused and labeled as "perpetrators" and refunds will be made to all affected fans.

Liverpool fought for a long time in this game but still regrettably lost 0-1 to the La Liga giants and missed the chance to win the treble. At the same time, it also indirectly became as one of the main reasons for their serious decline that season.