Russia keep hooligans away

MOSCOW: Hooligans have been conspicuously absent from the World Cup and Russia’s sense of vindication is palpable.

The beating muscle-bound Russian thugs inflicted on England supporters in France during Euro 2016 was still a major talking point in the run-up to the biggest event in sport.

Violence became a leitmotif of British and the broader media’s coverage and a foil used by critics of President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Few things insensed Moscow more than another retelling of the chairs thrown and punches landed in Marseille.

Now the group stage of matches is over and little has disturbed the peace besides the all-night singing of happy fans in the streets.

Some things have gone wrong. Argentina got fined after its supporters pounced on a Croatia rival and kicked him while he was down in Nizhny Novgorod Stadium.

Three England fans were banned for performing an antiSemitic song in a Volgograd pub.

And several female TV reporters have been groped and sexually harassed while doing their job.

But the host nation has emerged largely unblemished and the naysayers are being proven wrong.

This is Russia’s “told you so” moment — and state media are relishing every minute of it.

“The British press used ‘those scary Russians’ to frighten its fans so much ahead of the World Cup that most of them decided to stay home,” Channel One television said in a typical evening news broadcast.

“Now it looks like the fans who did come are no longer reading the English papers.”

Vesti television said all the good news coming out of Russia “is probably especially difficult for Western politicians to hear.”

Plenty of European media had actually stopped predicting a World Cup bloodbath by the final months of preparations.

Various hooligans told Western reporters that the Kremlin had been using a carrot-and-stick approach to ensure Russia was not embarrassed with the world watching.