• Home
  • Football
  • UEFA Champions League Final Report: What Are The Key Recommendations?

UEFA Champions League final report: What are the key recommendations?

The independent report into the chaos at last season’s Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid made 21 recommendations.

Some of the recommendations refer to procedural and technical issues while others relate to the treatment of fans. 

The panel recommended, in general, UEFA must take responsibility for oversight of delivery, irrespective of private stewarding or policing matters, and must exercise due diligence to ensure corrective action is taken where required.
Here we take a closer look at some of the key recommendations to come out of the report.

Recommendation 1

"Where failures are identified, UEFA must not just move on, but must rather exercise due diligence to ensure corrective action is taken where required, in advance of future events.
"This should be clearly documented, and a system instituted to ensure it is included in the consideration of future bids, and the planning of future events.

Recommendation 2

"Supporters arriving in the host city without access to match tickets should never be treated as inherently a public order problem but facilitated as tourists who are travelling to be a part of the festival the authorities are seeking to promote."

Recommendation 3

"They (UEFA's safety and security unit) should ensure there is an effective and agreed multi-agency crisis management plan, to be instituted in the event of an emergency.
"Where they occur the S&S unit should seek to actively resolve disagreements between partners and escalate any which remain.
"This responsibility should extend to mobility of supporters to the vicinity of the venue, arrangements for approach in the last kilometre, and access and should include consideration of all manner of threat and risk, including crime and congestion."

Recommendation 4

"Include fuller and more proactive engagement with disabled supporter organisations and the respective clubs to determine needs and requirements, as part of UEFA's fan dialogue policy.
"UEFA should proactively monitor all relevant service provisions for disabled supporters, and indeed other vulnerable supporters including children and the elderly, during the planning and delivery phases."

Recommendation 6

"It is made a requirement for host stadiums to have well-managed security perimeters, welcome services and crowd guidance and orientation.
"This should be integrated with efficient channelling and proper stewarding deployment avoiding congestions at turnstiles.
"In its oversight role UEFA should stress test the electronic turnstile systems to ensure sufficient functionality…more rigorous procedures must be developed to calculate flow through these access points."

Recommendation 12

"Football Supporters Europe and its affiliated supporter organisations need to be involved as meaningful stakeholders throughout the planning process and their representatives need to act on the day as integrated observers."

Recommendation 13

"Stewards - or marshals - should be trained and briefed to provide information and guidance to supporters (in their own language), but also to provide situation reports as necessary, and as problems arise, to the control rooms."

Recommendation 18

"The panel noted its significant concerns about the deployment of tear gas and pepper spray on the one hand, and the absence of any discernible engagement or dialogue with supporters.
"Guarantees sought should include an assurance that the policing authorities will operate a supporter engagement model, and that the deployment of riot police and the use of weaponry including tear gas and pepper spray, will only ever be used proportionately in circumstances."

Recommendation 21

"Evidence suggests similar problems, particularly regarding policing and access for disabled supporters, are regularly experienced, though to a lesser scale, by supporters attending other UEFA governed fixtures.
"We recommend that UEFA and the CoE (Council of Europe) Monitoring Committee looks closely at their capacity to apply some of the above recommendations more generically to avoid similar dangers developing beyond the remit of the UCLF alone."

More Articles