Fans flock to European cup final
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Turkish police, assisted by British and Italian colleagues, are on high alert as fans flock to Istanbul for Wednesday night's Champions' League final between Liverpool and AC Milan.
The 70,000-plus tickets available for the game have sold out, with 20,000 tickets allocated to each club.
More than 25,000 British fans are estimated to have traveled to the city where touts are charging ticketless fans as much as €1,000 for a pair or tickets to the match.
For those unable to get to the ground, officials will set up giant screens at Sultanahmet square, in front of the Blue Mosque, and Taksim square, where two British fans were stabbed to death five years ago before a UEFA Cup match between England's Leeds United and Istanbul's Galatasaray.
Supporters of AC Milan and Liverpool mingled in the historic district of Sultanahmet on Wednesday, and there were no reports of trouble.
"The atmosphere here is great. There is a real feeling of community among us and we're getting on well with the Liverpool fans," Italian journalist Stefan Cerati told Reuters.
Liverpool fans dominated the city's main Taksim Square, where they draped banners over restaurant fronts, clutching beer cans and singing terrace songs amid a party atmosphere.
"I've been waiting 20 years for this. When we beat Chelsea in the semi-finals it was the best day of my life but that will be eclipsed if we win against Milan," Liverpool supporter Brendan Cahill, 29, told Reuters.
Supporters boarded shuttle buses in the center of the city to take them to the Ataturk Olympic Stadium, nearly 30 miles away.
In hopes of pre-empting trouble, seven police officers from Italy and three from Britain were helping out Turkish police at airport checkpoints, Istanbul's deputy governor Vedat Muftuoglu said.
Authorities have allocated different airports to the fans, the Liverpudlians arriving at the Sabiha Gokcen Airport on the Asian side of the city and the Milanese at the Ataturk Airport on the European side, across the Bosphorus.
Immigration police were asking fans to present their match tickets along with their passports and those with tickets were given special three-day visas instead of the usual three-month ones given to tourists, the Anatolia news agency said.
Guests at the match will include Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- a former football player -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns AC Milan, and Argentinean football legend Diego Maradona, according to Anatolia.
TV channels on Tuesday evening showed footage of policemen escorting away rowdy Liverpool fans downing pints and baring their buttocks at passers-by outside bars in the crowded Taksim area.
Nearly 9,000 security officers -- police, security guards and paramilitary troops -- will be on duty in Istanbul for the game.
About 2,600 stewards will be among the crowd at the stadium, in addition to 1,000 policemen, 600 hidden under the stands.
The two groups of fans will be escorted to the stadium by different routes and will occupy distinctly different parts of the 78,000-capacity venue.
The closed-circuit camera system at the stadium was updated and state-of-the-art cameras were fitted at key points to zoom in on possible troublemakers in the crowd, Anatolia reported.
Liverpool's presence here also evoked memories of the Heysel stadium tragedy in Brussels in 1985, the last time the English club contested a European final.
As Liverpool and Juventus competed for the cup, a wall collapsed, killing 38 Italians and one Belgian as they tried to flee a mass of attacking Liverpool fans.
Juventus eventually won 1-0 on a penalty from its French midfielder Michel Platini.
