Thousands of English football fans have started arriving in the Russian capital, ahead of Wednesday’s Champions League Final. Precautions are being taken to ensure that hooliganism, sometimes known as the English disease, doesn’t spread to Moscow.

Security around the city has been tightened as the authorities try to prevent violence.

Another measure is reducing numbers allowed into the stadium where Chelsea and Manchester United will play.
There'll now be some 15.000 empty seats.

Some 83 fans linked to Manchester United and 69 linked to Chelsea have been ordered to surrender their passports ahead of the Game on Wednesday. It's part of a larger scale operation, aimed at combating football hooliganism.

This doesn’t include 3,100 people, who are banned from leaving Britain whenever there’s a game somewhere in Europe, such as the Champions’ League final. They won’t be allowed to leave the country.

So while some 42,000 supporters of rival English clubs are invading Moscow, London and Manchester pubs are getting ready for an invasion of their own.

Football hooliganism – sometimes described as the English Disease – became a phenomenon in the 1970s and 80s, when football matches were accompanied by violent fights.

A recent example of football fans’ violence occured last week after Zenith St Petersburg won the UEFA cup final in Manchester. A policeman was beaten and a Russian fan was taken to hospital after being stabbed in the back outside the stadium.

Dougie Brimson no longer gets involved in fights. And although he refuses to call himself a hooligan he admits ‘trouble’ was part of the fun in his time.

“Football is a passionate sport and those who follow it get very excited about it, and hooliganism really is the extreme of that passion, that you’ll fight for the reputation and honour of your club and it’s the same the world over But the level of hooliganism we see today in Britain is very different from what we saw in the 80’s and 90’s,” Brimson says.

Charlie, who’s a Chelsea supporter, is convinced football hooliganism is still alive.

“It’s only a thing of the past inside the stadium – outside the stadium there is a lot that goes on: a lot of threats and arrests – but it never gets reported. The thing that happened at Rangers last week – it happens quite a lot in football which people simply don’t realize. There is a lot of people and a lot of my friends – if the opportunity came around – they would get involved in it,” he says.

Just before traveling to Moscow, Charlie attended a news conference by the Russian authorities – to listen to what they’ve got to say about safety.

Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s Sports Minister, promised to prevent any possible acts of ‘so-called revenge’ here.

“Understandably, the fans of the team that looses will be highly disappointed. But we would ask all the fans – from Russia and from England – to value and appreciate football for what it is,” Mutko added.