LIVERPOOL CEO Billy Hogan admits he’s “in complete disbelief” after comments made by France’s sports minister over the Champions League final chaos.
The Anfield chief is demanding an apology after French sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said Liverpool fans were “let out in the wild” on Sunday.
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That’s after many innocent supporters were tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed by Parisian police following lengthy queues at the Stade de France.
She added: “What happened, first of all, was this mass gathering of the British supporters of the Liverpool club, without tickets, or with fake tickets.”
Those claims were backed by French interior minister Gerald Darmanin, who said: “There was massive fraud to an industrial level and organisation of fake tickets because the pre-filtering by the Stade de France and the French football federation saw that 70 per cent of tickets were fake.”
But Liverpool have hit back after Uefa announced it was launching an independent investigation into the shocking scenes.
Speaking at a Q&A, chief executive Hogan branded Oudea-Castera’s comments “deeply hurtful”, admitting he is “incredibly surprised” by the response.
And he wants an apology made to Liverpool’s fans, who went on to see their side lose 1-0 to Real Madrid.
Hogan said: “I would just say we are incredibly surprised that someone in that position would make comments in the first place at this point, when we haven’t had adequate time to understand what happened.
“There hasn’t been an independent investigation to establish all the facts. And as we said on Saturday, there needs to be that independent, transparent investigation into what happened at the match. That’s the start of the process.
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“So to be making comments at this stage, prior to any investigation being launched, is completely inappropriate. We should know all the facts to make sure that the scenes that we’ve all seen – absolutely disgraceful – from Saturday don’t ever happen again.
“Making comments as deeply unhelpful as that, we just feel that everyone should be focused on getting the investigation right and less about making inflammatory comments that attempt to deflect responsibility for what happened on Saturday night.
“What I would say is that our fans were provided the UEFA information to travel to the stadium safely, which they did; they approached the stadium as directed and in good time. However, it was on arrival at the stadium when they experienced the issues.
“In regard to the comments, we were in complete disbelief when we were made aware of them earlier today.
“I think it’s important that folks know that our chairman, Tom Werner, sent a letter to the French minister to articulate our views and is calling for an apology to our fans for those comments.”