What’s the betting that when UEFA show ‘highlights’ of the last sixteen of this season’s Champions League - prior to making the quarter and semi final draws - Manchester United fans being involved in a crush scare, Ryan Giggs scoring a controversial quick free-kick, and Lille’s attempted walk-off won’t feature in the montage of goals, smiles and rip-roaring action?

Of course it won’t. Lille vs Manchester United showed us the darker side of football once again, and in doing so proved that such archaic scenes aren’t merely the preserve of grotty little venues where one man and his dog manage to start a fight whilst watching players no one has ever, or is ever, likely to hear of.

It only goes to show that for all the money thrown at the Champions League, for all the pomp, ceremony and televisual delight, English football fans visiting European venues are still very vulnerable when stadium admission and crowd control aren’t organised properly, something that whilst we don’t have such problems any more at English venues, parts of Europe clearly still do.

The irony can surely not be lost that whilst Manchester United fans, desperately trying to escape the crush, were initially assumed to be trouble-making hooligans, at Old Trafford and other stadiums across the UK, fencing that causes crushes and widespread panic is banned because we’ve learnt our lesson and tackled, to the greater extent, the hooligan, missile-throwing, pitch-invading culture. Perhaps our continental cousins should take note.

As it was, the terrifying, and very nearly devastating, experiences of Manchester United fans in France surely puts the controversial events of the game itself into perspective, or so you would think. However, having shown themselves up once on the pitch for their ‘protest’ following Ryan Giggs’ winning free-kick, Lille have continued to defend themselves, claiming that in French football, protests like the one they mounted are the norm, and demanding what they see as justice from UEFA by making a formal complaint about the validity of Manchester United’s goal.

Lille aren’t the first club to face what they feel is injustice on the football field, and they certainly won’t be the last. Yes, there is a temptation to suggest that the referee allowed Manchester United to catch Lille off-guard because ‘big teams always get the advantage’, but at no stage does threatening to abandon the game assist Lille’s cause.

If the referee was wrong to allow the free-kick to be taken without blowing his whistle, then not only would he not be the first official to do that, but where is the difference between Lille’s perception of being cheated by the referee in that respect and all the countless penalties that referee’s have given that should never have been given, or goals that have been deemed to have crossed the line when they haven’t, or sendings off that have changed the course of a game. The list of perceived injustice is never ending, and however disappointed an underdog is at having 83 minutes worth of hard work ruined by a refereeing decision, that is, and always will be, the nature of football.

Instead, the actions of the French team, combined with the way the authorities dealt with policing the game and the fact that Gary Neville was hit by a missile, has left a bad taste in the mouth. Now UEFA have the unenviable task of trying to discover exactly what happened, both on the pitch and off it, and to come up with a suitable resolution that punishes the perpetrators and keeps the rules of law and fairness intact; a tricky assignment for an organisation not known for getting things right.

Part of the problem is that the bad feeling has continued to escalate between these two clubs to such an extent that, frankly, in further matches between them, such as the second leg of this tie, all hell could break loose. Lille handled their disappointment abysmally and have dished out a strong, albeit dubious, defence to claims about the crowd control, while Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, branded the opposition behaviour a ‘disgrace’ as the Red Devils launched their own investigation into the treatment meted out to their fans.

The accusations have been flying around from both sides as wildly as the reaction of the Lille players to the Giggs’ goal and the actions of all concerned in creating an overcrowding situation that we should all be eternally grateful didn’t result in fatalities. UEFA would do well to act swiftly in an attempt to quell the animosity, although not at the expense of resorting to the historical assumption that English football and its fans are the bad boys of our continent.

In the meantime, European football’s governing body must come to terms with seeing their precious preserve of the Champions League hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. So proud are UEFA to have created a giant in a world-sports context that they cannot now be blinded by the fact that it can just as easily become a monster; a vehicle where fans have been terrified, managers and players infuriated and that has, perhaps conclusively, proved that despite participants being geographically close they are poles apart in so many other ways.

Football, even in the hallowed Champions League, is still a raw game where emotions are exposed for what they are, fragile, impetuous and uncontrollable, but whatever happens on the pitch, no matter what the controversies, nothing can be ever be more important than correct safety and security for spectators, because football without its fans doesn’t bear thinking about.