Two hundred hurt in post-game violence as Paris hails second Champions League triumph


Soccer Football - UEFA Champions League - Paris St Germain fans celebrate winning the UEFA Champions League - Paris, France - May 31, 2026 Police officers protect themselves from flares after Paris St Germain won the UEFA Champions League REUTERS/Abdul Saboor

PARIS, May 31 (Reuters) - More than 200 ⁠people were injured and one person died in Paris following Paris Saint-Germain's second ⁠consecutive Champions League win, the interior ministry said on Sunday, reviving France's heated ‌debate about street violence.

A day after PSG beat Arsenal in a nail-biting Budapest penalty shootout, cementing their place on the throne of European football, fans were taking to the Champ de Mars open space near the Eiffel ​Tower to hail the players staging a victory parade on ⁠Sunday afternoon.

But, as last year, the ⁠celebrations were partly overshadowed by hefty street violence in the night after the game in ⁠which ‌57 police were injured in Paris and over 400 people taken into custody, a few of them outside the capital, authorities said.

Some storefronts in Paris were destroyed while ⁠rioters also torched cars and stands of rental bikes, police ​said.

There was some vandalism ‌against public buildings in provincial towns such as Orleans, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.

Police ⁠were not specifically ​targeted in most places, but one police station in central Paris was the site of brief clashes on Saturday evening, Paris police said.

One young man died following a motorcycle accident amid the unrest, the ⁠Paris public prosecutor's office said.

Nunez, a former Paris policechief, ​oversaw a huge security operation involving over 20,000 officers, and said the violence had been systematically addressed: "The situation was, overall, under control."

Politicians from the far-right National Rally, leading in opinion polls ahead ⁠of next year's presidential election, seized on the occasion to reiterate calls for firmer law-and-order policies.

"Only in France does a victory of a football club trigger riots," said Marine Le Pen, the movement's leader.

But others highlighted deep social divides as the cause of repeated violence and ​unrest, saying that those who had wreaked the most havoc were ⁠not representative of football fan culture.

"France is living under strain. Society is becoming increasingly brutal. We ​are a pressure cooker ready to explode anytime," said ‌Raphael Glucksmann, who is mulling standing in the ​presidential election on a centre-left ticket.

Last year, similarly chaotic celebrations following PSG's first Champions League title led to two deaths.

(reporting by Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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