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Rome will mount a huge security operation to try to avoid trouble at this month's Champions League final and prove UEFA were right to award the showpiece to the city.

Manchester United and Barcelona will meet at the Stadio Olimpico on May 27 in one of the world's biggest annual one-night sporting events.

The beautiful ancient capital of football-obsessed Italy seems the perfect choice for such an occasion, with the template for modern sporting stadiums -- the Colosseum -- featuring on the event logo.

However, several European games here in recent years have been marred by violence involving hard-core 'ultra' fans of AS Roma, with roving gangs armed with flick-knives committing stabbings away from the stadium.

William Gaillard, special advisor to UEFA president Michel Platini, threatened to take the final elsewhere before Roma's quarter-final against Manchester United last season if there was a repeat of the violence that hit United's previous two visits.

That did not happen but the issue flared up again after Arsenal fans were attacked before their team knocked out Roma in a last-16 second leg in March.

London-based newspaper The Times started a campaign to have the final moved, branding Rome, which also hosted the 1977, 1984 and 1996 finals, "stab city."

Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno took exception and has vowed to make the newspaper eat its words.

"The campaign against us is quite simply ungenerous and insulting. This is not the first time that Rome has hosted the Champions League final," Alemanno wrote in a letter to The Times.

"I should also like to point out, by way of an answer to the statements in the article, that a Google search with the words 'London' and 'stabbed' brings up 2,670,000 pages, 10 times those that appear for Rome.

"That alone should prove beyond reasonable doubt how mistaken the affirmations in that article really are."

(Source: Reuters)