At the Stade de France
Red everywhere. Coming to support their team opposed to Real Madrid in the Champions League final at the Stade de France (kick-off 9 p.m.), Tens of thousands of Liverpool supporters have been wandering the streets of Paris since Friday. On the tourist axes of course (Champs-Élysées, Eiffel Tower, Sacré Cœur…) and near the Place de la Nation where a gigantic fan zone has been installed to welcome Reds fans. From midday, the space located Cours de Vincennes was taken over by tens of thousands of English people who came to drink beer and sing under the sun in a good-natured atmosphere. For this meeting classified as high risk, the Prefecture of Police deployed 6,800 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters in Paris and Saint-Denis. The sale and consumption of alcohol have been strictly prohibited by prefectural decree between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. “in public spaces, in establishments open to the public as well as in drinking establishments located in the town of Saint-Denis” .
With a capacity of 44,000 people, the Liverpool fan zone will still be copiously filled at kick-off, ten kilometers further north, at the Stade de France. Because they will not be much more than a third, of the approximately 60,000 Liverpool supporters who have swept through the capital, to be able to sit in the stands in Saint-Denis. Barely 20,000 tickets, out of 75,000 places available, have indeed been allocated to the two finalist clubs.
Not enough to discourage Reds fans from making the trip. By plane, train, ferry or…canoe. After the cancellation of their flight to Paris, a group of a dozen supporters joined the island of Jersey by air before joining Saint-Malo on a fast boat and then joining the capital by train. “Nobody has a ticket for the match among us,” said one of the supporters in the daily Liverpool Echo.
Asked to join Saint-Denis “as soon as possible” by the prefecture because of the strike movement affecting line B of the RER, Liverpool supporters set the mood from the end of the afternoon in the metro and on the forecourt of the Stade de France with a lot of chants including the famous You’ll Never Walk Alone, to which Real Madrid aficionados responded with ¡Hala Madrid! and some anti-Mbappé chants.
Less numerous than their British counterparts, the supporters of the Merengue had gathered partly in a fan zone installed in the Parc de la Légion de Saint-Denis which could contain 6,000 people. “There are more Liverpool supporters in the streets but we will be as many as them in the stadium”, announces Pablo, whose last visit to the Stade de France dates back to 2000. A good memory since Real had gleaned its 8th there European coronation against Valencia in a one-sided match (3-0). “It will be the same score tonight,” he predicted.
