So it's official then, Liverpool fans are the worst in all of Europe.
Worse than the Italian fans who left the wife of a police officer widowed.
Worse than the French fans who held an anti-semitic rally which turned violent and resulted in the death of an officer from the Gendarmerie.
Worse than the Inter Milan fans who on one occasion launched a scooter from an upper tier of the San Siro and on another caused a Champions League quarter final match to be abandoned by hurling flares on to the pitch.
Worse than the Man United fans who clashed with riot police in Rome.
That's right, in the past four years Liverpool fans have been on the rampage across Europe and have caused more death and destruction than any of these incidents.
Except, of course, they haven't. Only in UEFA's (and the News of the World's) eyes has their behaviour been the worst in the whole continent.
Now what would make UEFA contradict everything we know to be true to come out with such an outlandish and unfounded slur?
Let me think........
Could it perhaps me that they're trying desperately to whitewash what really happened in Athens prior to the European Cup final and their own shambolic organisation?
Far be it from me to suggest it but that is what it seems like.
Apparently, they have a dossier of "25 incidents" over the last four years to prove their point but unless they can come up with incidents where the behaviour of Liverpool supporters is anywhere near as bad as those listed above then I'm afraid their dossier will be shown up to be exactly what it is - a desperately cheap shot in their increasingly nasty smear campaign.
And when their best examples of this apparently disgraceful behaviour come down to a few flags being nicked from the Olympic stadium and tickets being snatched from kids then we really are into the realms of the ridiculous.
Those who snatched tickets before the final have been condemned on this blog and by the majority of Liverpool fans. But are those who did it really worse than those who killed a police officer in Italy? Do me a favour.
What worries me most is if the roles had been reversed and Liverpool fans (or any other English fans for that matter) had killed an officer of the law then we would now be banned from Europe.
That's the way UEFA have operated for years. English fans cause trouble and they're condemned and hit with the most severe sanctions. Italian or Turkish fans cause trouble - and over a long period of time - and they're hit with petty fines.
My second big worry is while UEFA are rewriting history, no-one from Liverpool Football Club has spoken out on favour of the fans.
Now I know it's the closed season and I know everyone's entitled to a holiday but in the age of the internet and mobile phones surely it's not beyond the call of duty for some high ranking LFC official to come out in our defence.
Even from a corporate point of view - and we all know that's the one that matters most in the modern game - the Liverpool "brand" is taking a hiding.
In the absence of anything from the club, every news operation in the country is dining out on UEFA's smears. Sky Sports News - a close relative of the News of the World - keeps on running that same 15 second snatch of footage from Athens which shows about three lads bunking in as if it provides concrete evidence of what UEFA is claiming.
If Liverpool say nothing then UEFA's version of history will become the accepted version of events and it will be used against the club and its fans for evermore. Surely that provides enough motivation to provoke a response. If not, then are we to believe that Liverpool share UEFA's views of the fans?
The ironic thing is, or maybe it's not ironic when you inhabit UEFA's world of double standards, just two years ago we were being praised as Europe's finest fans in the world during the post-Istanbul glow.
That was despite the fact that this damning dossier was by then two years old and we were, as it transpires, well on our way to being named as Europe's worst.
Another irony is that just before the final our friend William Galliard was telling anyone who would listen that there would be no trouble in Athens because there was no recent history of problems involving fans of either Liverpool or Milan.
Now he's got us down as the biggest gang of rapists and pillagers since the Vikings took Europe by storm.
Could it possibly be that now he's rewriting history to cover his own arse?
All these 25 incidents that have got the Liverpool fans marked down as Europe's worst happened before the final in Athens.
So if they are so bad why wasn't this reflected in the organisation and the security for the game.
If you were told that there'd been 25 burglaries in your street then would you leave the front door wide open and turn the alarm off?
And if you did would your insurance company not laugh in your face when you told them you'd been broken into?
UEFA are having it all ways. They're now saying Liverpool fans are the worst in Europe but nothing they said or did in the lead up to the final suggested they believed this then.
The only thing that's changed since is their organisation has been shown up to be a sham and they want the spotlight pointed in another direction.
It's no surprise that they've pointed it at us because they see us as their get out of jail free card and unless someone from Liverpool FC comes out in defence of their fans then they will succeed in getting away with it.
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Byram crawford wrote...
Just for once i'd like Liverpool fans to acept responsibilty for their actions.
If the disgusting behaviour (yet again) of the Liverpool fans was entirely down to UEFA and nothing whatsoever to do with them then why didnt we see similar scenes from the Milan fans.
To any Liverpool fans reading that was a rhetorical question - I know you're a bit short of grey matter.
Posted by: Byram crawford | June 3, 2007 7:00 PM