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UEFA are refunding all Liverpool fans who attended the Champions League final in Paris last year in an unprecedented move that is likely to cost millions and which is a further acknowledgement of how far UEFA got the organisation of the show-piece event wrong.

An independent report commissioned by UEFA concluded that only the calmness of Liverpool fans prevented a ‘mass fatality catastrophe' after UEFA were found to have sidelined safety and security, that French police behaved incompetently by firing tear gas into the crowd and that French Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin inflated the numbers of ticketless fans ‘as an excuse to mask other failures’.

UEFA have already apologised and promised to implement recommendations in the report but this is the most substantive act of contrition and will cost Europe’s governing body millions of pounds.