“Thousands of fans were mugged, some were mugged at knifepoint, [and then later] people were being teargassed and hit with batons”, is how one Liverpool FC fan from Enniskillen described the chaotic scenes prior to the UEFA Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.

Shane Mulligan – a lifelong supporter of the Reds and a season ticket holder – travelled to Paris at the weekend and witnessed horrific scenes as fans were mugged, teargassed by police and were later unable to access the game held at the Stade de France.

The Liverpool fan had thought his troubles were over when he arrived in Liverpool via Leeds after having three Easyjet flights cancelled from Belfast International Airport, before boarding a flight at Belfast City Airport to fly to Leeds to get to Liverpool to catch a supporters’ coach, that then travelled onward to Dover, Calais and Paris.

Shane described to this newspaper how trouble began to brew as he estimated that “thousands of fans” were mugged and pickpocketed by youths in the French capital.

He said: “Saint-Denis [a suburb of Paris] where the match was, there was just thousands of youths – they were running in amongst us [attempting to pickpocket and cause disruption].

“Thousands of fans were mugged, some were mugged at knifepoint, [and then later] people were being teargassed and hit with batons.

“I’ve been to rough match days in Italy, I’ve been to rough match days in Kiev, and I’ve never experienced it like it was in this place.”

Shane continued: “I was handing out tickets to give to other people, and you were walking over to police officers to try and get their vision [so as not to have tickets stolen] to watch the ticket handover.”

Shane described how chaos began. He said: “We were all sitting inside and the match was delayed. We walked up the top of the steps then to see what was going on, and it was scary.

“Thousands and thousands of fans – people I was actually standing in the queue with – were standing outside and waving their tickets to show they had tickets. They must have been there for two and a half hours without moving five yards.”

He added: “You could hear crying youths, you could hear women screaming, and men screaming and shouting saying they had tickets.”

Describing the scenes, Shane continued: “There were French youths [without tickets] trying to get through, and then out of nowhere, they [the French police] started pepperspraying fans and teargassing them and hitting them with batons.

“There were Liverpool fans standing on walls, pulling youth fans out of the crush. The scenes were horrific, and people were beginning to panic.”

Shane revealed that many Liverpool fans began to fear the worst.

Hillsborough

“At that stage, everyone thought the worst was going to happen – there were a few Hillsborough survivors there, and they were starting to cry with their hands on their head.”

Shane continued: “The match was dead, and a ball hadn’t been kicked. We had just sang ‘You Never Walk Alone’ and the match didn’t start for another hour.

“The finals are supposed to be the best nights of your lives, and it just became a nightmare. Obviously, we were all disappointed we didn’t win it in the end, but it was about so much more than that.

“I was one of the lucky ones who was through before it was started.”

The French government blamed “massive, industrial-scale” fake ticket fraud, insisting that between 30,000 and 40,000 fans were at the ground with either no tickets, or fake tickets.

However, Shane strongly disputed this, saying: “To see the French government tell lies that there were 40,000 blagged tickets is just astonishing.

“That would mean there were nearly 70,000 of us there with no tickets – it’s just complete nonsense.

“They didn’t give the people outside a chance to even get through and scan their [genuine] tickets; it’s nonsense.”