It may not be much consolation to those Liverpool fans who were caught up in the chaos at the Stade de France on Saturday evening, but Marine Le Pen is on their side. In a television interview on Sunday the leader of the National Rally described events at the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid as a ‘humiliation’ for France, and she scoffed at the suggestion that English fans were to blame.
That was the claim made on Saturday evening by France’s Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, who, as tear gas still hung in the air around the country’s national stadium, tweeted his praise for the police and his condemnation of the ‘English supporters’.
Emmanuel Macron’s government has acquired a reputation for Anglophobia but this was a new low, a crass and ill-informed comment by a minister, and a deeply insensitive one. Television images of Liverpool fans crushed up against railings, including women and children, evoked memories of that terrible day at Hillsborough in 1989.
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