Bill Conlin: Moscow welcomes football fans

SO, WHAT DO you get when the biggest army since Napoleon showed up in 1812 - 55,000 Brits this time - has pitched camp in Moscow for today's UEFA Champions League final?

What you get is a potential perfect storm of soccer violence with Europe's equivalent of the NFL's Super Bowl as the eye of the hurricane.

You get ????????????? ??????? ????????????. Really big trouble.

It could have been a champion side from the Italian league vs. a German titleholder. It could have been any conceivable Euro combination from the "football"-playing powers of the continent and the United Kingdom. And maybe there would have been a semblance of a peaceful event in 70,000-seat Luzhniki Stadium - 15,000 seats were unsold to serve as a Brit buffer.

But, no ... The last teams standing in the Champions eliminations are 2008 Premier League champion Manchester United and second-place Chelsea.

Ironically, Man U's manic, red-clad fans call themselves "The Red Army."

Now that Major League Soccer soon will be played next to a Delaware River bridge near you, it's my duty to pass this information along.

Fresh in the minds of jittery UEFA officials and Moscow's city government is the bloody riot that swept through Manchester last Wednesday after Russia's Zenit St. Petersburg defeated Glasgow Rangers, 2-0, in the UEFA Cup championship game. Thousands of Rangers fans swept through the streets, assaulting every Russian in sight, leaving one stabbed, scores injured and 14 overmatched police officers on the casualty list.

A menacing deterrent will be prominent before, during and after an event that will be carried live beginning at 2 p.m. on ESPN2. Moscow's notorious "drink police" will be buttressed by the Omon, a national paramilitary force. These guys - many veterans of the brutal fighting in breakaway Chechnya - make the French Foreign Legion and Israeli special forces look like Boy Scouts.

All you need to know about their MO is in the Omon slogan: "We know no mercy and never ask for it." They give occasional public demonstrations of skills that include exercising on a surface littered with nails and broken glass. They typically do their close-in fighting with truncheons and attack dogs. The Omon selection process includes surviving five no holds-barred fights.