French police detained 780 people involved in violent clashes in Paris and other French cities that erupted Saturday night after Paris Saint-Germain won the Champions League title. Police said a man in his twenties died in a motorbike crash in the capital. Planned celebrations for the team's win on Sunday afternoon at the Champ de Mars, near the Eiffel Tower, are set to go ahead as scheduled.
French authorities announced Sunday that 780 people were arrested across the country when overnight celebrations of Paris Saint-Germain's Champions League victory over Arsenal were marred by violent clashes, and a road accident that killed a young man.
Thousands of people poured into the streets of Paris for the match and to revel in PSG's triumph in the final held in the Hungarian capital Budapest late Saturday.
But some mobs clashed with police, around 22,000 of whom were deployed across France after unrest last year when PSG also won the competition.
Read morePSG beat Arsenal on penalties to win back-to-back Champions League titles
Highlighting an increased use of fireworks directed at law enforcement, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said in a press briefing that 57 security forces were injured and that there had been "219 participants injured in France, including eight seriously".
The Paris public prosecutor's office announced the death of a young man in his twenties after he crashed head-on into concrete blocks on a Paris ring road exit ramp on his motocross bike.
Another young man was seriously injured in a knife attack in Paris allegedly over a robbery, the prosecutor's office added.
Nunez said a small number of thefts and lootings had taken place in around fifteen cities across the country and incidents of violence were recorded in 71 municipalities.
The 780 arrests was a 32 percent increase compared to the celebrations of PSG's Champions League win last year, the minister noted.
The match also came on a hectic evening in Paris, with singer Aya Nakamura performing at the Stade de France national stadium, rapper Damso at the La Defense Arena and the French Open tennis in full swing.
Victory parade
Around 100,000 people are expected to gather for a parade including the players on Sunday afternoon on the Champs-de-Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower, before being received at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron.
Nunez promised "a strong law enforcement response" during the players' return celebrations and fines for "obstructing traffic" in the event of any intrusion onto the Paris ring road.
The district mayor of Paris's 8th arrondissement – home to the famed Champs-Élysées where 20,000 people converged after PSG's victory – called for "zero gatherings" on the iconic avenue as the only way to avoid further violence.
On Saturday night, the "Champs-Élysées avenue and its surroundings ceased to be a place of celebration and became an arena of urban guerrilla warfare", the town hall for the district said in a statement.
"Since it has become impossible to celebrate a match without descending into riots, the only common sense response is a new doctrine: 'zero gatherings'," it demanded.
Nunez dismissed the idea, saying it would "tie up almost half of the security deployment". Nearly 6,000 police and gendarmes have been deployed for security during the celebrations on Sunday.
The clashes overnight angered the French far right, with three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen writing on X that "only in France does a football club's victory spark riots."
"Only in France does everyone feel compelled to lock themselves in their homes on the evening of a victory to avoid being confronted with violence," she added.
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 EU lawmaker Raphaël Glucksmann, who is mulling standing in the presidential election on a centre-left ticket.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
