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Liverpool fans stuck outside the ground show their match tickets during the UEFA Champions League Final at the Stade de France, Paris(Image: PA)

The French minister who tried to smear Liverpool fans after the disastrous events at the 2022 Champions League final said: "The culprit was easy and I apologise to the Liverpool supporters." Gerald Darmanin, who was the interior minister at the time, was widely criticised for both his department's handling of the final and the lies and smears he personally spread about Reds' fans in the aftermath.

The match was marred by distressing and dangerous scenes outside the stadium, which saw LFC supporters forced into dangerous crushes before the match on May 28 2022.

Fans were also attacked by police with tear gas and pepper spray, while after the match many supporters were robbed and beaten by local gangs.

In the immediate aftermath, Mr Darmanin and his colleagues including sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra frantically sought to blame Liverpool fans for the chaos, despite countless video and picture evidence disproving this.

In an interview with the YouTube channel Legend, he admitted to having made a communication error by accusing Liverpool fans of having been behind the unrest before the match v Real Madrid.

In the interview he said he arrived at the stadium "in a strange atmosphere," and realised there "could be a problem" when he saw the stadium wasn't full before kick off.

He said: "On the CCTV footage, we saw a red-faced crowd of Liverpool supporters, huddled against the gates, and riot police were holding them back.

"It's Liverpool, a huge club, but it's also English hooliganism.

Our initial analysis is 'they're causing trouble.' That's what I learned at the security post, that's what the police chief who has since joined me told me, that's what the footage shows."

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He said "our security system wasn't designed for that all" in relation to the gangs robbing fans outside the stadium and claimed: "We were expecting a hooligan war and instead we had people who came to commit racketeering."

Mr Darmanin told the podcast: "The combination of all the bulls***, the broken RER (the rail system) that put the people of Liverpool in a single entrance, the fact that tickets were disrupting the flow of people, and the crime that we didn't know how to manage meant that during the first public outing, I said what I was told: 'The English are causing trouble.'

"It wasn't entirely false because there had been counterfeit tickets and assaults on the police side, but it wasn't true in the literal sense of the word.

It is a failure because I had not planned well, it is a mistake on my part, I had not checked properly what was happening...The culprit was easy and I apologise to the Liverpool supporters."

In the three years since the match, Liverpool fans injured at the final have been fighting to have their claims against UEFA heard.