Klopp reveals his family got caught in Paris mayhem

JURGEN KLOPP believes good fortune was the only reason a catastrophe was avoided at the Champions League final as he revealed his family refused to tell him about their own harrowing experience.

Liverpool’s manager had not previously spoken about the events in Paris but he has now gone on record and called for UEFA and football’s authorities to learn the lessons from May 29 to ensure nothing like that happens again.

Klopp had 50 family and friends in the Stade de France, headed by his wife, UIla, and their two sons. They had messaged him in the build-up to the showdown with Real Madrid and sent him their best wishes to put his mind at rest — but the reality was different.

It took them 90 minutes from sending the message to getting into the stadium and Klopp received another 47 accounts from those closest to him that tallied with the nightmares Liverpool and Madrid supporters went through due to shambolic policing and organisation.

‘There are different things to talk about,’ said Klopp. ‘Some of them, I think, it makes no sense to talk about because there is an ongoing investigation. There is the other part of what I know — even if I didn’t know a lot immediately after the game.

‘But a situation outside? I heard first hand from my family because they were in the middle of everything. They texted me before the game, “We are in, good luck” stuff like this but they were pretty much one-and-a-half hours away from being in the stadium.

‘ What happened to them happened to everyone, pretty much. Two or three people I spoke to were lucky, they got in and were waiting. Then there were all the issues through the game. People sitting on seats next to them that were not theirs. They were thinking: “What are you doing here?”

‘There was not one Liverpool supporter in the wrong spot. There were a lot of spots occupied by people without tickets but they were not Liverpool supporters.’

Klopp added: ‘ This is pretty much the story everyone told, everyone had this experience. I think I knew 50 people inside the stadium and 47 people told me exactly the same story. That is not how it should be.

‘In the end, it felt for them — and they are passionate Liverpudlians — that the smallest problem we had that night was that we lost the game. Imagine that around the Champions League final. Crazy.

‘My family didn’t tell me on the night. They told me the next morning. Obviously this is a good example of how it should not be. We all know how beautiful Paris is and the big events they have got coming up in the next few years.’

UEFA have launched an independent investigation into everything that went on, with Liverpool having received more than 9,000 testimonies from people who were there — and plenty have insisted they will never go to another European away match. It was bad enough for fans to be greeted with chaos getting into the stadium but they then faced issues such as police indiscriminately spraying tear gas at them while organised gangs of local youths went on a spree of muggings and violence before and after the game, which Madrid won 1-0.

‘These kinds of things need to be sorted and clarified,’ said Klopp. ‘First and foremost for the reason that it cannot happen again. I think we were lucky that more did not happen. It says it all that the smallest problem after was that we lost. It is why the authorities have to make sure there is never a repeat.

‘It was clear where it was held was a problem but I think in Paris, the authorities would have known about the regional issues there. Anyway, UEFA decided pretty quick that it will be in Paris. This is not the first time UEFA and Paris have worked together. I’m 100 per cent sure that nobody made a mistake intentionally.

‘It’s not that everyone thought: “Who cares how supporters get in!” But the mistakes still happened — now we have to sort it.’