A huge crowd of supporters gathered peacefully near the Eiffel Tower on Sunday to celebrate Paris Saint-Germain’s second Champions League title victory, which was marred by violent clashes overnight across France and led police to detain hundreds of people.
PSG beat Arsenal on Saturday night in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, 4-3 in a penalty shoot-out after a 1-1 draw following extra-time.
Read morePSG beat Arsenal on penalties to win back-to-back Champions League titles
Thousands of people celebrated across France into the night but the parties were blighted by incidents of clashes with police, burglary, vandalism, a deadly road accident and hundreds of arrests, authorities said.
On Sunday morning, municipal workers were busy cleaning streets strewn with debris from broken glass, damaged bus shelters, trash cans and vehicles set on fire and bicycles overturned.
Authorities made security assurances on Sunday before a parade including the players on the Champs-de-Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower that was expected to draw tens of thousands of people.
Thousands of PSG supporters were already waiting for the events to start, waving flags and sporting PSG kit as the team landed late from Budapest in the afternoon.
“We’re still riding yesterday’s high, so we want to keep the party going,” said 25-year-old Abou, a PSG fan “since he was little”.
“Paris, Paris” chanted supporters, many of them young, as they filtered through security checkpoints and tried to get spots near a stage where the players would appear, songs like “We Are the Champions” blaring.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez promised “a strong law enforcement response” during the players’ return celebrations and fines for “obstructing traffic” in the event of any intrusion onto the Paris ring road.
Paris authorities said nearly 6,000 police and gendarmes have been deployed for security during the celebrations, which would also see the PSG team received at the Elysee Palace by President Emmanuel Macron before returning to their Parc de Princes stadium.
Arrests
Nunez said in a press briefing earlier Sunday that 780 people were arrested across the country during the overnight celebrations.
He highlighted an increased use of fireworks directed at law enforcement and said 57 members of the security forces were injured and that there had been “219 participants injured in France, including eight seriously”.
Read moreOne dead, 780 arrested across France as unrest mars PSG’s victory night
The Paris public prosecutor’s office announced the death of a young man in his twenties after he crashed head-on into concrete blocks on a Paris ring road exit ramp on his motocross bike.
A group of supporters had stormed the ring road, bringing traffic to a halt for a time and letting off flares, an AFP photographer said.
Another young man was seriously injured in a knife attack in Paris, allegedly over a robbery, the prosecutor’s office added.
Nunez said thefts and lootings had taken place in around 15 cities across the country and incidents of violence were recorded in 71 municipalities.
‘Zero gatherings’
The district mayor of Paris’s 8th arrondissement – home to the famed Champs-Elysees, where 20,000 people converged after PSG’s victory – called for “zero gatherings” on the iconic avenue as the only way to avoid further violence.
On Saturday night, the “Champs-Elysees avenue and its surroundings ceased to be a place of celebration and became an arena of urban guerrilla warfare”, the town hall said in a statement.
“Since it has become impossible to celebrate a match without descending into riots, the only common sense response is a new doctrine: ‘zero gatherings’,” it demanded.
Nunez dismissed the idea, saying it would “tie up almost half of the security deployment”.
Shops boarded up their windows ahead of the match to avoid a repeat of disturbances last year when youths ransacked shops on the Champs-Elysees and other streets. Hundreds of people were arrested.
Three-time far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen wrote on X that “only in France does a football club’s victory spark riots”, while the hard-left France Unbowed spokesperson said, “We cannot be satisfied with the way last night’s event was managed and organised by the government.”
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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