The white smoke drifted towards us across the intersection of Boulevard Mourat and Place de la Porte Molitor. The Roland Garros clay remained a few hundred yards behind while the blue stampede from the nearby Parc des Princes continued its march up ahead lit by their flares and fireworks.
A car drove through the cloud followed by a man on a bicycle, who immediately veered towards the pavement. Around the same time, my eyes suddenly burned white hot as the fumes filled my nose and lungs as the crack from a few more handheld fireworks rang in the ears.
So, it wasn’t the dying remnants of a flare after all. It was tear gas. For some reason, one individual – not even one of the hundreds of riot police – thought a fine way to celebrate Paris Saint-Germain’s victory was to launch a series of gas canisters into the road.
Many who caught the brunt of it raced to the public water fountains on the pavement to douse their faces while masked fans brandishing flares marched up the street.
And yet, by this stage, barely half an hour after Gabriel’s penalty landed halfway up the stand Puskas Arena in Budapest, the celebrations still felt jovial. They were yet to tip into the full-scale riots between fans and police that, for a second year running, tore down the city until dawn. The lines and lines of riot police stood stationary by their vans. Cars were yet to be set ablaze.
Tens of thousands of fans walked singing and cheering and waving their flags as they marched from the Parc des Princes, where around 40,000 fans watched the game on big screens inside their team’s stadium. They slapped the cars who drove past honking their horns as swathes of scooters beeped away alongside them.
Cries of ‘Ici, c’est Paris’, the chant of PSG, could be heard from the balconies of buildings along the streets as fans stood out their windows amid the bright red fire and smoke of yet more flares.
One man jumped out of his car window and to the roof, while the driver parked up in the middle of the busy intersection, and conducted the jubilant crowd behind him.
Others launched streams of fireworks into the sky from their handheld launchers, even if the light of the late afternoon meant you could barely see the display. As good-natured as it still felt, there was always the sense, amid the memories of last year’s disgrace, that it wouldn’t take much for the party to become a warzone. And yet it would prove to be so again.
Two people died and nearly 200 were injured last May after PSG’s triumph over Inter Milan where nearly 300 cars were set on fire, monuments and buildings were damaged and shops looted. There were far fewer riot police ready and waiting then. This year, they blocked and barricaded roads in attempts to funnel supporters down certain avenues instead of the chaos being allowed to spread to all parts of Paris.
PSG triumphed in Budapest but back home in Paris celebrations turned sour
PSG fans celebrate at the Trocadero plaza in Paris after winning their second Champions League in a row
Fans drive scooters past riot police with the streets ablaze with flares
Police react to a burning car and fireworks by the Eiffel Tower
Even though this was an earlier kick-off to last year, as the night went on, the trajectory of those fireworks would become ever more horizontal as supporters in this usually affluent part of Paris – akin, perhaps, to London’s Kensington – fired them like missiles into random groups of passers-by or towards police officers, who responded with batons, water cannons, and tear gas of their own.
Others stood next to flaming Lime bikes wearing t-shirts that read: F*** ARSENAL 2026.’
At around 2am, a colleague witnessed a gang of topless youths dragging a wheelie bin down the street only for it to emerge coming back the other way engulfed in flames. An elderly woman berated them from her seventh-floor balcony. Another woman in the building waited by the doors to keep an eye on her family car parked in the road, to make sure it wouldn’t end up as just another burned-out shell.
By morning, a 17-year-old fan had been stabbed by a gang of thugs near the Champs Elysee and was in intensive care. Nearly 800 people were arrested in the rioting. More than 200 were injured.
A police officer was struck by a vehicle and the driver left the scene. The interior minister, Laurent Nunez, said 57 officers were wounded. Six thousand have been primed ready for Sunday’s victory parade at the Eiffel Tower that, despite everything, was still planned to go ahead as scheduled.
Another gang tried to storm a police station in the 8th arrondissement. More shops were raided. A 23-year-old on a motorbike died after colliding head-on with a wall.
What should have been scenes of joyous celebration turned into ones of shame. Again.
