UEFA insist their ticket policy for this season's Champions League final in Moscow will allow more fans to attend the game.European football's governing body this week put 10,500 tickets for the match in the Russian capital on Wednesday May 21 on sale via their own website.

They have defended that stance, despite the clubs who reach the final only being allocated 21,000 tickets each in the 70,000 Luzhniki Stadium.

Last year's final in Athens was marred by trouble involving Liverpool fans who arrived without tickets for the clash with AC Milan.

"Seventy-five per cent will go to fans. Last year it was only 65%," UEFA spokesman William Gaillard told the BBC.

"I don't there is any other competition in the world that guarantees that many tickets to fans, especially when you compare it to the World Cup or competitions in the past.

"Not all can go just to the two clubs. There should be tickets for fans all over Europe as well as the local fans in Moscow, who would like to see such a prestigious game."

Gaillard added: "Liverpool fans had problems last year, we know that, but we cannot manage tickets that are given to the clubs involved in the final.

"Once we give tickets to clubs, they have to distribute them. We cannot go into cities and start distributing them ourselves.

"We have now decided to have stadia with capacities of over 75,000, although there will be some exceptions because not all countries have stadia of that size.

"However, we know this solves only a small part of this issue because even if we had a stadium of 150,000, that would not cater for all fans."

Gaillard believes there will not be a repeat of last year's scenes that reportedly saw people with forged tickets allowed into the stadium and genuine ticket-holders turned away.

He said: "The stadium in Athens last year was an Olympic stadium, therefore the arrangements were for an athletics crowd. This year there will be electronic turnstiles."

Gaillard also confirmed UEFA will continue its fight against touts getting hold of tickets before showpiece games.

"In any system, you will unfortunately find ticket touts. It is a tough battle - we are fighting this every year and we have the law on our side," he said.

"Ticket touting is not only illegal commercially, it has an effect on security arrangements in place to avoid incidents inside the stadium."

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