Follow along here as the two European giants meet in a dynamic title match in Paris, where more history will be made.
Meanwhile, Real Madrid won its 35th Spanish league title earlier this year. Four years ago, the two sides met in the Champions League final in Kyiv. Real Madrid prevailed, 3–1, thanks in part to two second-half goals from Gareth Bale. However, the game has been widely remembered for Sergio Ramos injuring Mohamed Salah in the first half, and the Egyptian has vowed to exact a measure of revenge with his new opportunity. The road to Paris has been filled with twists and turns, but on Saturday, two European giants in Liverpool and Real Madrid will meet to decide the Champions League title.
European soccer's showcase game was delayed more than 30 minutes after overcrowding at the stadium gates led to clashes between fans and the police.
The security official said that “it was a police decision” to close entry and exit points. Tommy Smith, a Liverpool fan who had traveled to Paris from Ireland with a group of friends and family, said his group had arrived two hours before the scheduled kickoff and found that there were few entrances where fans could present their tickets. “Thank you to the very many police forces mobilized this evening in this difficult context.” “Thousands of British ‘supporters’ without tickets or with counterfeit tickets forced entry and sometimes assaulted the stewards,” he wrote. One group of V.I.P.s, delayed because of a problem scanning the Q.R. codes attached to their tickets, scaled a fence in an effort to get to their seats. The confusion, and rising anger, created a potentially dangerous situation in which French police officers, wearing helmets and carrying shields, used canisters of what UEFA, which runs the Champions League, said was tear gas to keep the surging crowds at bay.
Tottenham will return to Champions League action in September after missing out on Europe's premier competition in the past two seasons.
Eintracht Frankfurt, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, PSG, Porto and Ajax are all options for the Lilywhites in Pot 1. Pot 1 contains the 2021/22 Champions League and Europa League winners, with the league champions from England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Portugal also included in there. Champions League football returns to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in September after Antonio Conte's side managed to seal a top-four finish last weekend.
The soccer Champions League final in Paris was marred as Liverpool fans were sprayed with tear gas as they tried to enter the stadium, delaying the start of ...
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Carlo Ancelotti's side had come back from the dead so many times en route to the final but for once they didn't need to in Paris.
And so in an era when most managers espouse a philosophy, when we talk of grand tactical schema and the dominance of Pep Guardiola’s juego de posición and Jürgen Klopp’s gegenpressing, the first manager to win the Champions League four times is Carlo Ancelotti, who is as mutable and pragmatic as they come. Modric’s outside of the boot pass to Benzema to equalise against Chelsea at the Bernabéu is the defining moment of their campaign because it required such virtuosity at such a vital time. But this has not been a normal season for Madrid. They have survived by their nerve, by their capacity to produce moments of brilliance when they have needed them. At the very last he was there, claiming a cross from the left in a crowded box and giving it one last punt downfield. The rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone in injury time was less a rousing call to one last surge than a mournful hymn of defiance. The only difference between the final and what had gone before was that this time there was no point at which Liverpool apparently had the game won, and Karim Benzema didn’t score.
PARIS: Chaotic scenes at the French national stadium before and during Saturday (May 28) night's Champions League final were branded a national ...
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PARIS (REUTERS) - Real Madrid secured a record-extending 14th European Cup when they beat Liverpool 1-0 in a Champions League final delayed for more than ...
A fantastic club, a really good squad with a lot of quality and mental character,” said Ancelotti of a team who came from behind against Paris St Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City to reach the final. Liverpool had won the previous European Cup final both teams had played in Paris, winning 1-0 at the Parc des Princes in 1981, which was Real’s last defeat in a final. “I am a record man.
Two soccer titans meet in a match to determine the best club in Europe. Follow along for live updates and analysis.
Real Madrid finished second in La Liga last season to qualify for the Champions League. It topped Group D with five wins and one loss. It won all six of its Champions League group-stage matches and then beat Inter Milan, Benfica and Villarreal in the knockout round to advance to the final. (Scottish club Celtic in 1966-67 became the only team to achieve a quadruple of major European trophies). Liverpool won a pair of domestic cup competitions earlier this season. Twelve minutes later, after a Sadio Mané equalizer, Gareth Bale angled an acrobatic bicycle kick over Karius, who again became the focus of fan ire when Bale drilled a long shot through his hands to score 20 minutes later. The governing body initially described the reason for the delay to late-arriving fans, but updated the attribution as a “security issue.” Thiago made his return after sustaining an injury during Sunday’s Premier League finale. Its best chance came around the 20th minute when Sadio Mané cut inside and unleashed a shot that hit the near post as Madrid keeper Thibaut Courtois scrambled to recover. Return to menu Madrid rode a second-place finish in Spain’s La Liga, followed by a 5-1 record in the group-stage and knockout wins over Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City, to the final. Return to menu Two of the top clubs in European soccer renew acquaintances Saturday in Saint-Denis, France, as Liverpool meets Real Madrid for the UEFA Champions League crown.
The Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid in Paris was delayed on Saturday amid crowd congestion outside the Stade de France.
They forced their way through the first filter. UEFA announced the delay at 8:46 p.m. CET before saying that a further announcement would be made within a maximum of 15 minutes. The screening at the Stade de France is watertight.
Liverpool Football Club has requested a formal investigation into the ugly scenes that marred the Champions League final in Paris on Saturday.
"This created a build-up of fans trying to get in. "In the lead-up to the game, the turnstiles at the Liverpool end became blocked by thousands fans who had purchased fake tickets which did not work in the turnstiles," UEFA said in a statement "We are hugely disappointed at the stadium entry issues and breakdown of the security perimeter that Liverpool fans faced this evening at Stade de France," Liverpool said in a statement
Liverpool also calls for investigation of crowding at turnstiles; French politicians point finger at UK supporters.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN), called for a parliamentary enquiry, blaming the chaos on mismanagement and “traditional delinquency which has caused every event to turn into a riot.” Liverpool cited huge disappointment at the “stadium entry issues and breakdown of the security perimeter,” according to a statement. “I think we do need to ensure that they are looking into how this happened. French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra also laid the blame for the chaos with British fans. But there were also U.K. reports of peaceful queuers being targeted with tear gas. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd outside the stadium, it said.
French police arrested dozens of people in Paris during the Champions League final, which was marked by scenes of chaos that delayed the kick-off.
Some 40,000 Liverpool supporters without a match ticket had packed into their zone in eastern Paris to enjoy the atmosphere. "From party to fiasco," said France's leading sports daily L'Equipe. (AFP) - French police arrested dozens of people in Paris during the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, which was marked by scenes of chaos that delayed the kick-off.
Real Madrid have won more than twice as many European Cups as any other team, and that carefree pedigree showed in their latest win over Liverpool.
Not with Courtois, in the prime of his career, staking a claim as the world's No. 1 between the posts and getting a few things off his chest. Except, even without Mbappe, you suspect this won't be their last -- not when there's a guy like Ancelotti, one of the few men who can pull off the cardigan-cigar-shades combination and lead a team in transition to a league and Cup double. There was David Alaba, demanding and getting a massive chest-bump from his defensive partner, Militao. They needed a spark and they got it from the way they defended. Madrid were on the ropes, but this is a team that knows how to both dazzle and suffer. When Madrid tried to play from the back, they were met with the twin central barrier of Salah and Sadio Mane, with Luis Diaz on the left and either Jordan Henderson or Trent Alexander-Arnold on the right. "This was maybe the most difficult Champions League [win]," Benzema said. That's what happens when arithmetic grants you the league early: You have the luxury to rest and recuperate, tweak and tinker, eyes and minds fully engaged on the prize. He was also able to call upon, on paper, his first-choice XI, but the vibe was different. But the tools of victory were those they had employed in earlier rounds: belief, unflappability and experience. And now the Kylian Mbappe snub isn't quite so infuriating -- it has to be satisfying to win a European Cup in his city, a 10-minute scooter ride from where he was born and raised. But perhaps no team has ever become champions of Europe after overcoming such a tough run in the knockout rounds: Mbappe's (and Lionel Messi's) Paris Saint-Germain, defending champions Chelsea and then Manchester City and Liverpool, No. 1 and No. 1a in most fans' unofficial power rankings. (Or, as club president Florentino Perez put it after the game: "Mbappe is forgotten now and that's OK ... Madrid had a perfect season."
As we wait to get a full picture of exactly what happened in Paris, it's worth examining the context in which these events have occurred.
where large numbers of fans died because of crowd crushes, have become a thing of the past, with huge improvements in the organization and management of major soccer events. “This created a build-up of fans trying to get in. It happens on a very, very regular basis.” “A football stadium is a reflection of the state of our society and our society after the health crisis is not doing well: it is anxious, worried, disunited, quarrelsome and – it has to be said – a little crazy,” he suggested. “We are hugely disappointed at the stadium entry issues and breakdown of the security perimeter that Liverpool fans faced this evening at Stade de France,” the statement said, “this is the greatest match in European football and supporters should not have to experience the scenes we have witnessed tonight.” According to a statement from the game’s organizers, UEFA: “In the lead-up to the game, the turnstiles at the Liverpool end became blocked by thousands of fans who had purchased fake tickets which did not work in the turnstiles.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon criticises 'confrontational policing' at Paris final, saying country seems ill-prepared for future events.
Mélenchon said the police’s job was to “ensure calm” and “prevent things going badly” but that they had done the opposite and “aggravated” the situation. It concluded that after the match, supporters were dispersed without difficulty and there were “no major incidents” in the two fanzones elsewhere in the French capital. He thanked the police for their work “in this difficult context”.
France's sports minister accused "thousands of English fans" of "attempts of intrusion and fraud" at the Champions League final won by Read Madrid.
Liverpool defender Andy Robertson called the organization of the match “a shambles” after a friend to whom he had given a ticket was denied entry into the stadium. The Champions League should be a celebration but it wasn’t that.” It wasn’t a nice experience, not a nice final to come to. “I heard a few things that were not good, it was obviously pretty tricky out there but I don’t know more about it.” “We have officially requested a formal investigation into the causes of these unacceptable issues.” “Violence has no place in the stadiums.”