Dread rumours had surrounded the final, ghastly forewarnings for the travelling supporter. Win or lose, despair and bitter regret, coupled with the likelihood of bankruptcy, were, apparently, the only plausible eventualities for those obsessed or downright naive enough to attempt the journey east. So what happened? How come the all-English Champions League face-off in Russia turned out, for such a large majority, to be a smoothly organised, crisply administered adventure lacking the dimension of imprisonment and even became, for some, a party?

Several hours into my Moscow “consumer experience”, strolling idly past the Kremlin in the direction of lunch, I realised that not one of the following hotly advertised outcomes had befallen me. I had not been detained at immigration for the best part of a day by still fundamentally Communist paperwork protocols. I had not been bullied into a “rat-infested prison”, as promised by the Daily Mail. And nor had I been charged in excess of 1,000 roubles (about £21) for a fizzy drink or been driven three times round the ring road before having my luggage emptied by an unscrupulous and unlicensed taxi driver.

As for the “fans’ gulags” — well, there were none. True, later in the day I would be pointed in the direction of a vaguely segregated “fan zone” — one of a pair of areas near the stadium where supporters could hang around and wait for the kick-off. But let’s note, for future reference, that a “zone” is very different from a “gulag”. At any rate, I’m not sure that programmes, novelty fur-style hats and Coca-Cola were on sale in the gulags.

Fans seem to have been cheerfully released on to the streets and left alone to do the sights, many of which had been generously buffed up in anticipation — in particular Red Square, which was given over to a football-themed “Champions Festival”. I suspect that to get the full, majestic sweep of the square, you need to see it when it doesn’t have so many bouncy castles and branded tents.

Still, here was a rare opportunity to see where Stalin’s remains lie and have yourself photographed with the European Cup immediately afterwards. And surely you would be a fool to turn your nose up at a one-stop chance to see Lenin’s embalmed body and Sir Bobby Charlton. (I missed him, but people were excitedly talking about having seen him wandering around near the five-a-side pitch. This is Sir Bobby I’m talking about, obviously, not Lenin.)

Pre-match gloom had spread even as far as the state of the pitch. We were led to expect an unprecedented horticultural disaster featuring unfitted rolls of underlay, freshly imported from the frozen wastes of the north and still thawing, and ugly bare patches, like someone’s lawn after a paddling pool comes off it. Word had it that Russian groundsmen had been jumping up and down on the pitch all afternoon in an unsuccessful attempt to get it to lie flat.

But no. It looked green — bright green. And none of it seemed to be sticking up in the air, not even in the corners. Heck, it looked almost like the kind of pitch you see in England.

As for the Luzhniki Stadium, it was pleasingly reminiscent of the old Wembley — or of how the old Wembley might have been had it only afforded the luxury of an unobstructed view and a seat you could comfortably sit in. Not that we did, in fact. At the Chelsea end, day-trippers from Gatwick, 17 hours into a 24-hour period, or more, of wakefulness, remained standing for the entire 120 minutes plus pens.

“Bring it back,” people had said when two English teams qualified for this final. “Stage it at Wembley. Make it easier for the fans.” Really? And maybe we should start up the Home Internationals again, while we’re about the business of wilfully lowering the horizon. The Champions League is meant to be a European competition, after all, and no matter that English clubs may come to dominate it, the moment that it exists to meet the convenience of a few thousand people from Manchester and London, it’s over. It’s bigger than that and, being bigger, involves travel.

True, from the point of a view of a Chelsea supporter, when John Terry missed that one kick for glory — one simple, 12-yard side-foot with several million pounds, a European title and a place in history hanging off it — London did seem quite a long way away and home somewhere one badly needed to be. But if you feel like burying yourself . . . well, Moscow isn’t such a bad place for that, too. Ask Lenin.