Chaos after thousands walked in at Copa Final at Hard Rock | Miami Herald

The start of Sunday night’s final of the Copa America futbol tournament between soccer giant Argentina and Colombia at Hard Rock Stadium was marred by thousands of unruly fans — many without tickets — who stormed the gates, scaled walls, jumped turnstiles and even slithered through vents to get a glimpse of the spectacle.

To relieve the pressure and avoid a stampede, Miami-Dade Police and Fire Rescue ordered the stadium’s gates opened well before the kickoff. What ensued was a cat-and-mouse game of police chasing and seeking out thousands of ticketless soccer fans, some of whom were taken into custody.

What also happened: The stadium became so overcrowded so quickly that security ordered the gates shut, locking out hundreds, maybe thousands of fans who paid top dollar to attend one of the most looked-forward-to sporting events in years.

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“It was a life-or-death situation. Let the people get crushed or open the gates,” said Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, the police union. “Then it became total mayhem in there. It was a calamity of errors on all levels.”

The game finally began 80 minutes after the scheduled 8 p.m. start time. Pictures of cops escorting mostly young men out of the ballpark were splashed all over social media. In all, Miami-Dade Police said 27 people were arrested and 55 others were ejected from the stadium. Several police officers and stadium security sustained cuts and bruises.

Among those arrested was Ramon Jesurun, the 71-year-old president of the Colombia Football Federation and a vice president with CANMEBOL, the governing body of Copa America. Miami-Dade Police charged him with three counts of battery on an employee. His arrest warrant claims that as Jesurun was leaving the stadium, he grabbed a security guard by the throat, pushed him to the ground and punched him. His son was also arrested.

Read More: Head of Colombia’s soccer governing body arrested after Copa chaos in Miami

There were 65,300 tickets sold.

And though there was an extraordinary number of police on the property, according to county leaders — almost quadruple the amount of a typical Sunday Miami Dolphins game — it seems the chaos can mostly be chalked up to security not accounting for the thousands of visitors who were permitted to walk into the stadium without game tickets.

Who to blame wasn’t immediately clear. That’s because long before the gates to the stadium were opened, the soccer governing body that oversaw the tournament and Hard Rock Stadium security plastered fans with notices that no vehicles would be permitted into the interior parking lot surrounding the stadium, if the occupants did not have tickets.

The notices were sent to the press. They were splattered all over social media. Even the exterior of the stadium and the entrance and exit to the nearby Florida’s Turnpike had electronic boards up saying, “No Tix. No Parqueo.”

What wasn’t accounted for: The sheer number of fans who parked outside the interior parking lot, or who arrived on foot — some after being dropped off by a Rideshare. The numbers overwhelmed stadium security, according to event organizers who had not set up enough checkpoints around the perimeter to ensure that everyone had a game ticket.

Felipe Ledesma, a master’s degree student at Southeastern University in Lakeland, drove down to see his beloved Colombia in the soccer final. He witnessed the masses outside the stadium, got in, but couldn’t take his seat because someone else was in it. He watched the match from the concession stands, sitting at a bar that had shut down earlier in the evening.

“I saw a lot of kids crying, being smashed into one another when they were trying to get in, people just running away. And it was intense,” he said.

The three entities that jointly addressed security concerns were the soccer governing body CONMEBOL, Hard Rock Stadium security and Miami-Dade Police. None spoke directly on the record Monday about what led up to the chaos. Police and a spokesman for Hard Rock Stadium said the gates were opened early to avoid fans being “crushed.”

Late Monday, CONMEBOL posted on its Twitter account that it was bound to the security measures in the contract agreed upon with Hard Rock Stadium and that its recommendations, which are “proven in events of this magnitude,” were ignored. The event organizer did not say what those measures included.

“We regret that the acts of violence caused by malicious individuals have tarnished a final that was ready to be a great sports celebration,” CONMEBOL said in the statement.

Tuesday morning, Hard Rock Stadium said it had worked with CONMEBOL, CONCACAF and local law enforcement on security.

“The agencies met regularly, including daily security briefings throughout the month-long tournament. Hard Rock Stadium implemented, and in many cases exceeded, CONMEBOL’s security recommendations throughout the tournament and the Final,” said the Hard Rock statement, noting stadium officials would “evaluate the protocols and processes in place across all aspects of stadium operations.”

Probe could offer ways to avoid future mayhem

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, at the command center in the stadium when the mayhem began, offered no insight into the security lapses during a Monday press conference. She did say she was “outraged by the unprecedented events that took place.” The mayor said she will wait for an investigation to be completed before offering proposals on how to prevent future gate-storming.

County Commission Chairman Oliver Gilbert, who attended Sunday night’s match and also attended Monday’s briefing, said Hard Rock Stadium has had much larger events like the annual Rolling Loud Music Festival, without anywhere near the commotion that took place Sunday.

“We’ve had 50,000 kids who are out of their minds, and they’ve never done anything like that,” he said.

Meanwhile, County Commissioner J.C. Bermudez was critical of the security lapse and posted to social media that it “unfortunately put us on the international stage for the wrong reasons.” Bermudez, who chairs the commission’s Community Safety Committee, said it was “clear that we could have done more,” and that “with the 2026 FIFA World Cup on the horizon, we must learn from our past experiences…”

Bermudez has requested a rare meeting out of public view with Levine Cava and fellow commissioners to discuss what went wrong and how to right the ship before the 2026 World Cup.

“If yesterday’s Copa America Final Championship is any indicator, we have a lot of work to do,” he wrote in a memo.

And though the game didn’t disappoint — Argentina defeated Colombia 1-0 in extra time and Shakira entertained during the break — the bedlam left hundreds, perhaps thousands of fans with tickets, locked outside the ballpark. Others who paid sky-high prices, in some cases just for a glimpse of superstar Lionel Messi during one of his final international appearances, were forced to grapple with uninvited guests who had taken their seats.

Florida is believed to be home to as many as 300,000 Colombian and Argentine immigrants and soccer fans. Tickets for Sunday night’s highly anticipated match were selling for between $1,500 and $8,000. Hours before the game began, the parking lot was filled with music, singing and dancing.

Event organizers said they’re working on a way to refund ticket costs for those who couldn’t get into the game. But they won’t be able to refund black market prices, which in many cases were thousands of dollars more than the actual ticket price.

Police presence extensive

Though security was breached, there were an unusually high number of police at the event. Almost 600 officers were assigned to cover the entrance, interior perimeter and inside the stadium. Fearing the swelling crowd, another 200 were added in the early afternoon.

Those numbers dwarf Miami Dolphin games when only about 200 police officers work at the park, according to Stahl. The police presence, he said, was more typical of a Super Bowl or college national title game. For the Feb. 2, 2020, Super Bowl at Hard Rock — the last Super Bowl at the stadium — about 1,500 officers were assigned after Homeland Security took a threat by Al Qaeda seriously.

That year, Stahl said, no one could enter the interior parking lot without a ticket. The union president said there were no known threats at this year’s Copa America championship.

Much larger crowd expected during World Cup at stadium

And as big an event as Sunday night’s game, it’s likely to be eclipsed in two years when Hard Rock Stadium hosts seven World Cup games including the quarterfinals and the Bronze Medal game.

Though the fervor of Argentine and Colombian fans desperately wanting to see their international team for the first time in decades is likely to be unmatched, a cross-continental playoff between, say, England and Brazil will certainly bring tens of millions of more eyeballs to South Florida.

That’s something county leaders and the mayor are well aware of.

“We will be working with the organizers to ensure that a full review of last night’s events takes place immediately so that we take all possible learnings going forward as we prepare for the 2026 World Cup,” said the mayor. “We certainly recognize that there’s a lot to be learned and a lot that we can improve upon in the future. We’re ready to learn everything we can.”

Miami Herald writer Joanne Haner contributed to this report.

This story was originally published July 15, 2024 5:00 PM.