Deepmala Sok Appadu is a Liverpool fan who attended the European Champions League Final. Below, she recalls a night she’d prefer to forget.
First of all, congratulations to Real Madrid — not that I remember any of the match.
This was the fourth European final I attended (previously, Basel in 2015, Kyiv in 2018 and Madrid in 2019), and I can’t even remember how many European away matches I’ve been to. I’ve been a regular match-goer since Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez’s last season in 2010, and when I say regular, I mean my life usually revolves around going to matches.
But this time, what started as a great trip with my Liverpool family, turned into one of my worst experiences, as I was being crushed and gassed.
I don’t like crowds to begin with, that’s a fact. But I’ve always been okay in football crowds — until Saturday.
We had arrived at the station near the stadium at 6:30 p.m., and I made it inside at 8:45 p.m.
Between the underpass and the walkway was where everything happened, all the pushing and crushing. Older women were climbing the wall to get to the walkway, only for the police to push them off. They were hitting people with batons. I refused to get on the wall, insisting to my two friends that I’ll walk around instead — that’s when we realized the start of the concourse was only about 1 meter away. Imagine how desperate people were to not have realized that?
Once I was able to get on the stadium concourse, I knew I had to queue at Gate A, stick close to others and distract myself, keep my head down. Once I was in, I refused to go to my seat — which was in the middle of a row and meant I’d be surrounded by people — instead, I stood in the aisle. I was shaking. I don’t remember the match . . .
From the bottleneck at the underpass to the gates, all I could hear was French youngsters plotting how to get into the stadium. They were the ones who started the pushing, and it just escalated from there.
I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just stating the facts. I don’t want pity either, I just want people to know the truth.
Liverpool fans were made up of people from all age groups, both sexes and from all walks of life — including many children under the age of six, and older women in their 70s.
I saw people who have been going to matches for 60 years being turned away from the turnstiles because they were told their tickets weren’t valid, then being attacked while they were walking away. We all had to look after each other — no one else was.
We were treated like animals, and then, at the end of the match, the French riot police only surrounded where Liverpool fans were, as if we had created problems. And they continued to do so, even as we headed to our Eurostar return journey.
It’s inhuman how we were all treated in Paris, when we overpaid for everything by at least three times and gave a good boost to the French economy. I am bilingual and have lived between London and Paris for years until the start of the pandemic — the things I heard being said in French were ridiculous.
And the worse part of the whole thing? All the rubbish I’m reading on social media from rival fans, jumping to conclusions and letting their bitterness get in the way of humanity. I don’t wish anything bad on anyone, but there’s something called Karma in this life. You weren’t there, you don’t know what happened, so stop jumping to conclusions based on prejudice.
This whole experience has given me some sort of post-traumatic stress, and I now feel myself being jumpy all the time.
Would I go to a football match again? Definitely, 100 percent. It’s something that makes me happy — absolutely and completely. It’s one of my passions. But for now, I need to spend some time with my husband, family and friends — and forget this moment in time.