LONDON — The final match of the Premier League season for Manchester United and Bournemouth was abandoned Sunday afternoon after a security blunder forced the dramatic evacuation of tens of thousands of fans from the stadium.
The authorities were initially praised for ushering 50,000 spectators out of Manchester’s Old Trafford stadium after a suspicious object was found in the stands. Sniffer dogs were dispatched, and bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled detonation of what was then described as an “incredibly lifelike explosive device.”
But to officials’ embarrassment, the suspicious item — a cellphone connected to a gas pipe — turned out to be a training device that the police later announced had “accidentally been left by a private company following a training exercise involving search dogs.