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

UEFA officials say they don’t expect any trouble, and certainly no retaliatory attacks on Manchester United or Chelsea fans but last week’s rioting on the streets of Manchester and stabbing of a Russian fan raises wider questions about who is to blame, and whether violence can ever be completely kicked out of soccer.

UEFA says it can’t solve the problems without the help of the police and local authorities. The clubs say they cannot be held accountable for the behaviour of all their fans. Politicians say it is a deeper sociological problem. But still the violence goes on.

After AC Milan’s victory over Liverpool in Athens, European soccer’s governing body has stepped up its security measures, notably introducing new modern turnstiles, specialised staff training and more cooperation with local police.

But the common denominator between Athens and Manchester was ticketing. UEFA says it has done just about everything to curb forged tickets or to stop tickets getting into the wrong hands.

But officials say, if the violence continues, they may be forced to introduce biometric entry via fingerprint or eye scan in the future. Has soccer really come to this?

PHOTO: Russian interior servicemen sit in trucks with a soccer poster in the background as they get ready to provide security measures in central Moscow, May 20, 2008.  REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov

I guess most if not all fans of Manchester United and Chelsea wish the Champions League final was being played a little closer to home.

The decision to waive visa restrictions should have helped a bit but with flight and hotel prices rocketing an awful lot of fans who would have made the trip to Paris, say, are presumably going to stay at home.

Darren Ennis blogged here recently about the wisdom of awarding the final so far in advance, suggesting that the venue could be taken from a shortlist of candidates once we’ve reached the quarters or the semis, ensuring greater convenience for fans.

If UEFA decides to go that route, it could mean that this year’s final will be the second and last to be held in eastern Europe — at least for a long while to come — with English, Italian and Spanish clubs likely to dominate the latter stages for years to come.

The only other time UEFA has ventured out to eastern Europe for their showpiece final was in 1973 in Belgrade when a famous Ajax Amsterdam outfit led by Johan Cruyff clinched their third successive European crown with a 1-0 win over Juventus, whose number eight was a certain Fabio Capello.

Serbian websites describe the match, played in front of 93,500 fans crammed into Red Star’s stadium, as one of the most memorable sports events held in communist-era Yugoslavia.

The country was outside the iron curtain and those Ajax and Juve faithful who may have made the trip should have found it relatively easy to reach eastern Europe’s window to the west of the 1970s.

Now it’s off to Moscow, which may not be the easiest place to get to for English fans, but at least is original.

Or would you rather have had it at Wembley?

Zoran Milosavljevic, Belgrade

PHOTO: A leaf blower in use on the pitch at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium, May 2, 2008. REUTERS/Alexander Natruskin