From the end of the Second World War until the fall of communism in 1990, the United States and the Soviet Union played out the Cold War struggle in Europe, Asia, Africa — anywhere but on each other’s home turf.

This week, America and Russia face off again on supposedly neutral territory. This time, instead of the no man’s land on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, the battleground is Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea, owned by Roman Abramovich, the Russian oil and gas billionaire, entertain Liverpool, who are co-owned by George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks, American sports entrepreneurs, in a Champions League semi-final, first leg on Wednesday.

The game will be shown live both in Moscow, where Abramovich once had an interest in CSKA, through his company, Sibneft, and in Texas, where Hicks also owns the Dallas Stars, of the National Hockey League [NHL], and the Texas Rangers, of Major League Baseball. However, because one of the nations involved actually knows and cares about the game of football — and the other calls it “soccer” — finding a place to watch involves considerably more undercover work in the Land Of The Free than it would in the former centre of what Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire.

The staff at Liga Pap, a restaurant and sports bar in central Moscow, near the Lubyanka prison, were expecting a busy evening on Wednesday. “Yes, we’ll be showing the semi-final, Chelsea against Liverpool, on Wednesday, starting at 22.30,” Katya, who answered the phone, said. “It will be on a big screen. Many people in Russia like Chelsea, so it’s a good idea to reserve a table.”

According to guide books, Liga Pap’s big screens often show old Russian movies or even British sitcoms rather than 24-hour sport, so it is easy to appreciate the importance of the match if it can bump Battleship Potemkin or Are You Being Served off the Panasonic HD. But then Russia’s football history is a long and colourful one, going back to when the nation was part of the Soviet Union. Politics and football frequently overlapped. For example, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, the head of Jozef Stalin’s secret police, banished the four Starostin brothers who had founded and played for Spartak Moscow to the Gulags for ten years because he supported their city rivals, Dynamo, the official police team. Only when Stalin's son, Vassily, a Spartak fan, intervened were they brought back to Moscow after three years.

The United States has no such rich football heritage and even when big local sporting events are shown in sports bars, the drinking and consumption of food usually seems to take precedence over the action on the screens.

Steve, at 221B Baker Street Pub and Grill in Fort Worth, Texas, was less sure than Katya whether he would be able to cater for any groundswell of Liverpool support building in Tom Hicks’s backyard. “This might be a hard one,” he said when asked whether the match would be shown live. “Do you know what channel it’s on? We do get quite a few soccer fans coming, but it has a lot to do with whether we are capable of getting the feed. Just let me check.” Ten minutes later, the answer was in the affirmative. “We will be showing it, at 2.30pm our time. I don’t know how many soccer fans will be coming. But if you ask the staff at the bar, they can switch it on for you.”

Despite the continuing indifference to the beautiful game in the US, the two nations are not that far apart in the Fifa rankings, with Russia sixteenth and the US 29th. Perhaps the Americans would take more notice if there were more head-to-head match-ups, to use the parlance with which they are familiar. However, the anniversary of the only international match between the nations, a 2-0 win for Russia in Moscow on April 26, 2000, comes up on Thursday. So, in the meantime, the Champions League must be the only continuation of the Cold War by other means.