ISTANBUL - Turkish police, assisted by British and Italian colleagues, were on full alert Tuesday as fans flocked to Istanbul for Wednesday night's Champions' League final between Liverpool and AC Milan.
The 70,000-plus tickets available for the game have already been sold out, with 20,000 tickets allocated to each club, but there are concerns some fans may still travel to Turkey's biggest city in hopes of buying on the black market.
In hopes of pre-empting troublemakers, seven policemen 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.
The number of police on on airport duty was boosted, with reinforcements from from private security firms.
VIP guests will including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - a former football player - as well as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns AC Milan and Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona, according to Anatolia.
Turkish officials are confident the tight security will prevent trouble during the event at the Ataturk stadium, on the city's European side.
There were some early indications of what might happen Wednesday as TV channels on Tuesday evening showed footage of policemen escorting away rowdy Liverpool fans downing pints and baring their buttocks at passers-by outside the bevy of bars in the crowded Taksim area.
Nearly 9,000 security forces - 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.
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.
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.
05/24/2005 15:30 GMT