MOSCOW (AFP) - Thousands of police patrolled the streets of Moscow on Wednesday amid fears of violence as some 50,000 English football fans descended on the Russian capital for the Champions League final.
Interior ministry troops and riot police wearing black helmets and bulletproof vests were deployed near Red Square and in the area around the Luzhniki stadium where Manchester United beat Chelsea in a nail-biting game.
After the match officers blocked off access to Red Square next to the Kremlin, where city authorities had set up a small football pitch and stalls for visiting fans. Hundreds of soldiers were on standby near the square.
Despondent Chelsea fans and jubilant Manchester United supporters meanwhile filed out of the stadium towards waiting buses. Dozens of charter flights from Moscow airports prepared to carry fans back to Britain during the night.
Apart from a few brawls, the scenes in the streets were mostly peaceful as fans, some wearing traditional Russian fur hats and waving banners, thronged Red Square and bars in the centre of oil-rich Moscow before the game.
"We didn't get our drink on to Red Square. The police banned it, but apart from that it's great," said Manchester United fan Parmy Singh, who flew in on Wednesday and planned to stay up all night to avoid sky-high hotel prices.
Fans said the high prices of travelling to Moscow had put many supporters off attending the showdown. Others complained about the strict alcohol bans in place as part of elaborate measures to prevent any crowd violence.
Thousands of ticketless Russian and English fans also crowded into Moscow bars to watch the game, with tickets being sold by touts outside the stadium going for around 400 dollars (253 euros) just before the start of the match.
"It's so funny. I could never imagine I would watch an all-English Champions League final in Moscow. It's unbelievable," Patrick O'Donnell, 38, a Chelsea fan in Moscow on business, told AFP in a pub packed with hundreds of fans.
Following Chelsea's 6-5 defeat, the mood turned sombre in the pub. Helen Tinie, a housewife from London, said: "It sucks. It really sucks to lose this way. We had everything in our hands. We could have made history."
Among the Chelsea supporters at the game were club owner Roman Abramovich, a billionaire playboy who made his fortune in Russia's cut-throat oil business, and ex-KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, one of Britain's most wanted men.
Lugovoi is suspected by British police of the 2006 radiation murder in London of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko but Russian authorities have refused his extradition or prosecution in Moscow.
The Litvinenko case plunged relations between London and Moscow to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War although there have been some signs that Russia's new President Dmitry Medvedev wants to improve ties.
"Russia is showing all of Europe that it is an open state and has caused no visa problems," Lugovoi was quoted as saying, referring to an unprecedented order by Medvedev to suspend visa requirements for fans with tickets.
Russian authorities said they had made every effort for the comfort and security of fans, including closing off city streets and using around 1,000 buses to ferry football supporters around Moscow.
Officials said more than 14,000 security officers had been deployed.
In what appeared to be an isolated incident, Interfax news agency quoted a member of Russia's Manchester United fan club as saying some 50 Russian hooligans had attacked a group of English fans, injuring two of them.
"We've had a couple of isolated reports of disturbances," said a spokesman for the British embassy, which has worked together with Russian officials on match preparations despite still frosty official relations.
