UEFA are confident that Manchester United and Chelsea fans attending the Champions League final in Moscow will not cause trouble similar to the riots that blighted the UEFA Cup final in Manchester last week.
More than 40,000 English fans are expected in Moscow for the first all-English final on Wednesday and UEFA's general secretary David Taylor said on Sunday that tough policing would keep the fans in order.
UEFA also did not expect many, if any fans, to arrive in the Russian capital without a ticket. "We are never complacent but certainly we are confident there will not be the same vast numbers that there were in Manchester," Taylor told BBC Radio.
"We also believe the style of crowd management with the Russian authorities and the police will be somewhat different to the way the English police an event.
"We've had lots and lots of meetings with the security authorities and they have been very helpful, even allowing fans to use Red Square itself as the venue for their Champions League festival area.
"It shows they are going to be very welcoming but I'm sure also there will be some very tough policing if there is any sign of disorder." Taylor said there was no question of the final being moved to another venue such as London's Wembley Stadium. "Events like this are now not only on a Europe-wide scale but a worldwide scale and the planning, which is meticulous, starts a couple of years before. "For example, we have just awarded the 2010 final of the Champions League to Madrid. So moving it at such short notice is just not a practical proposition."
NO EXCUSES:
He said the behaviour of Rangers supporters in Manchester was like a return to the dark days of hooliganism that blighted the game in the 1970s and 1980s.
Forty-two fans were arrested and 15 police officers injured after trouble flared in Manchester, which was hosting the UEFA Cup final between Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg. "It was really disgraceful and something on a scale we've not seen for some time. Whatever the issues around it, the giant screens not working or whatever, there are absolutely no excuses for the sort of disorder that occurred.
"Thankfully, it seems the authorities got on top of it pretty quickly and have expressed themselves satisfied that, on the whole, the vast majority of supporters were well behaved."
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