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“I couldn’t breathe. It felt like it (the tear gas) was going in everywhere it could: my ears, my nose, my mouth, my eyes, the back of my throat. “I just kept thinking, ‘Why are they doing this? And why are they doing it so often?’. I had to tell myself, ‘They’re not going to stop, you just have to get through this’. “It felt like I was suffocating. My eyes were stinging. I’ve never felt anything like it before. But that wasn’t the end, because they were still spraying us when we came out of the ground. It was like they had a new toy and they were using us for their bit of fun.” Elliott Anderson’s bedroom is a shrine to his favourite football team. The sign on his door reads, “Anfield Road”. A picture of his favourite player, Salah, is emblazoned on the red and white walls. Elliott sleeps beneath a Liverpool duvet. His head rests on a Liverpool pillow. His rug shows that famous liver bird. There is a Liverpool scarf hanging from the windowsill, a Liverpool drinks coaster, a Liverpool clock and on and on. Elliott is nine. He has just got back from primary school, munching a packet of crisps on the sofa, dressed in his Liverpool kit. And he is about to say something that even his father, Dean, has not heard him say before. “When it (the tear gas) started, I thought it was being dropped down from a helicopter. I could hear a helicopter above us. I started coughing. I didn’t know what it was. It just hit us. My nose was hurting, my throat too. It made me cry. People were shouting at the police, ‘There are kids here, this lad’s not even 10 years old’. But the police did nothing. They didn’t care.” Elliott Anderson, 9, covers his face from the gas He and his father had flown into Paris on the day before the match and, before everything turned sinister, there was plenty of time for sightseeing. One photo shows Elliott by the Eiffel Tower. Another shows him at Notre Dame. Others are taken at the fan park on Cours de Vincennes. After that, it is a frightening story. They arrived at the stadium in plenty of time but the gates were locked and thousands of people were outside. They waited, and waited, and slowly it became clear they might not get in. Then came the tear gas and the panic. Other match-goers gave Elliott water to soothe his eyes while he covered his face in his scarf. They were locked out and, just before half-time, Dean broke the news that it was hopeless. Darkness was falling. It was one of the hardest conversations he has ever had with his son. “I was really disappointed,” says Elliott. “There was nothing that could be done, and I just started crying even more.” The following day, Elliott was so exhausted and traumatised he did not have the energy to go to the open-top bus parade in Liverpool. Dean had booked flights so they could watch the homecoming for Klopp’s team. Instead, dad and son set off on the journey home to Retford, Nottinghamshire. They have subsequently discovered they were among 2,700 Liverpool fans with valid tickets who did not get into the stadium. Elliott’s idol is Mohamed Salah Elliott, though, says it will not put him off going to matches in the future. He has already looked up the date of next season’s Champions League final in Turkey and, if nothing else, he has happy memories from the airport. “The Liverpool players were flying out to Paris at the same time as us,” he says, now smiling. “They were on the next plane to us. Virgil van Dijk looked across and waved. I waved back. At least we saw the players then.” The text is still on her phone. At 7.20pm UK time, shortly before the twice-delayed final was originally meant to kick off, Claire Whitehurst picked up her phone to send a message to her husband, Tom, asking for an update. Social media was buzzing with stories about Liverpool fans struggling to get into the Stade de France. She was starting to feel anxious. “Just seen the pictures,” she wrote. “Looks like my idea of hell.” What she did not know at the time was that her husband was still outside the stadium with their son, Harry, and their big adventure was turning into a nightmare. Harry is 14. He has Williams Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder, and it is chilling to hear what flashed through his mind in some of the more harrowing moments. Harry was excited to be going to the final “A bunch of people got tear-gassed right in front of us,” he says. “I remember seeing one lad and he was just ‘out’ in seconds. I was scared. I had a burning sensation in my throat. I thought I was going to be sick. There were a lot of people shouting and panicking and I was thinking, ‘What is this?’. For a second, I actually thought it was Putin starting the gas.” Harry is part of the Liverpool Disabled Supporters’ Association. He sits at the front of the Kop for home games and helps to put out the banners and wave the flags. Anfield is where he is his happiest. “It’s a big part of my life,” he says. “It feels like home to me. I know loads of people there. It’s just really nice, like a big family.” He has been going to games since the age of five and, three years ago, he was in Madrid to see Liverpool win the final against Tottenham Hotspur. It was, he says, the happiest day of his life. He and his dad hoped to return from Paris with similar memories. Instead, they encountered all the pandemonium, the dangerous crushes, the confusion, the hostility of the police, the aggro from Parisian gangs, and the awful feeling that they were in danger. They did not get into the stadium until just before half-time and, by that stage, the football felt almost immaterial. “It was really hard to enjoy it,” says Harry. “I just felt down. I was upset and angry. I’d been so excited about going. You get so hyped about the good days in your life. You go to the airport, you fly over, you sing, you party. We were having such a great time and then, as soon as we got to the stadium, it just went downhill.” It is a Liverpool-supporting family. Tom says he is relieved they did not have a third ticket because that would have meant Scarlett, Harry’s 12-year-old sister, being there. At home, Claire was trying not to panic, waiting for updates. Harry will be back at Anfield next season. But it hasn’t escaped his attention that a number of people in prominent positions, including the Paris police chief, Didier Lallement, and the country’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, tried at first to blame Liverpool fans for turning up late and accused them of having forged tickets on an industrial scale. “We all knew they were lying,” says Harry. “When they said there were 40,000 fake tickets, we knew it was a lie. Now the police have admitted the truth and apologised to our fans, but I’m not accepting it. If they’re saying, ‘We’re sorry, but we still think tear gas was the right thing to do’, why are they apologising in the first place?” The irony here is that when UEFA switched the Champions League final from Wednesdays to Saturdays it was to make it easier for children to attend. UEFA wanted to create more of a family atmosphere. Then the children arrived in Paris and look what happened to them. “I’ve been going since I was six and that was definitely the most frightening experience,” says Roman Renoldi. “Everything was scary. I felt trapped. My dad had to shield me, it was just horrible.” Roman is 11. He, too, was left in tears because of what he saw. He, too, felt endangered, vulnerable, small. And, like all the young fans who are telling their stories here, he understands it is important to get the truth out if the people who are really to blame are trying to pin it on Liverpool’s supporters. He talks about Hillsborough, too. Even at his young age, he knows what happened on that April’s day in Sheffield in 1989. He knows, mostly, because his father, Simon, was among the Liverpool fans when the crush occurred that killed 97 people. Simon went on the pitch and helped to carry the stricken on emergency stretchers made from advertising boards. What happened in Paris has brought back a lot of difficult memories. Roman Renoldi, 11, with Liverpool legend Bruce Grobbelaar In the crush outside the Stade de France, there was the unmistakable sense that something could go terribly wrong again. “That’s when I started to panic,” says Roman. “My dad has told me about Hillsborough. At one point, when we got to our gate and couldn’t get in, I was asking my dad if we could go home or go somewhere else to watch it in a pub. I didn’t want to be there any longer.” The saddest thing, perhaps, is that every one of these children will always be distrusting of one of Europe’s great cities. All say variations of the same thing: it has put them off Paris forever. And who can be surprised when their visit to the French capital contained so many dangers? The story, for example, of one father, Danny Smith, who was set upon by a mob of locals carrying hammers and other weapons. They pinned him to the ground and stole almost everything he had. Danny’s leg was broken in three places. He has had surgery and it will be a long, difficult recovery requiring nine months off work. His 13-year-old son, Dan, was in Paris with him and witnessed everything. Kade Corfield was leaving the stadium with his father, John, around the same time. “My dad had tight hold of me and said, ‘No matter what, do not let go of my hand.’ I thought that was quite odd because usually we just walk out the ground together, laughing and singing, but this was different.” As they tried to find a safe route back to their car, the tear gas started. Kade is 12 years old and asthmatic.