Moscow might have developed into a shiny new example of capitalist consumerism but the 50,000 English fans arriving on Wednesday for the Champions League final were given a flashback to how the city looked under the greyest days of Communism.
Four hours before kickoff in European soccer’s most important game, soldiers and police outnumbered fans by about 300 to one and not a metre of the route from the Sportivnaya Metro station to the Luzhniki Stadium was unguarded.
The few fans who wandered into the areas surrounding the stadium were dwarfed by the immense military presence - around 15,000 are on duty - as bank upon bank of troops and police stood in line, staring blankly through the cold evening drizzle.
With no alcohol on sale and precious little else on offer in terms of entertainment, most of the fans already here seem to have opted to stay in the city centre before making their way out for the 10.45 local time kickoff.
Thousands more were being bussed straight from the airport, and will go straight back there in the early hours, their entire Russian experience being restricted to what they could see along the roadside through their windows.
A handful of souvenir stalls were offering the usual array of military fur hats and Russian dolls for prices that would have bought a holiday apartment on the Black Sea 20 years ago but there were few takers, hardly surprising in the wake of the outrageous flight and hotel costs the fans had been forced to bear in this most ill -thought out UEFA experiment.
With the leaden skies and constant drizzle further dampening the atmosphere it all added up to a very flat build up for a game that should never have been here in the first place.
Mitch Phillips, Moscow
PHOTO: Matryoshka dolls with portraits of Manchester United players are displayed for sale at Red Square in Moscow, May 20, 2008. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
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How’s the fan behavior there? Doing live blogging at:
- Posted by Mikehttp://startingeleven.blogspot.com/
Always complaining about everything.
At the end of the day, the doomsday scenario that ill-informed British journalists forecast for the final in Moscow did not come to pass.
Ignorance is bliss.
- Posted by VincentMitch, I couldn’t disagree more. But then again, I was in the United fan pub in Moscow before and after the game and right next to the United end during our epic triumph. Also, ask Tony J. to play the video of us red devils singing in the tube as we made our way to Luzhniki. The two night clubs I visited on Thursday night provided the icing on the cake. P.S. We ran the pub dry of beer after the game and closed it at 0830 in the morning.
- Posted by Red Devil