Euro 2016: England fans urged not to provoke police who are already dealing with terror threat as clashes continue

Senior British police have urged England fans to remember that French police are already dealing with a serious security threat in Euro 2016 before acting in a way which may provoke clashes throughout the tournament.

The reputation of the nation’s supporters took a further battering on Saturday, when there were yet more running battles between English fans and French police, as well as Russian fans, confirming the worst fears of senior British officers about the scheduling of the opening game on a hot weekend on the Mediterranean coast.

Mark Roberts, head of the UK Football Policing Unit, told The Independent three months ago that he wanted fans to consider the size of the task facing the French force before they travelled. With the first fixture having brought the worst instances of English excess drinking and anti-social behaviour to southern France, officers desperately want to prevent the actions of a minority spiralling out of control by provoking an increasingly strong French reaction.

Though there has been a substantial element of provocation behind the violence in Marseille’s old port, some English conduct has been an embarrassment and shown the absence of any kind of self-policing among groups. A low point was the chanting about Isis by a few moronic fans, showing blatant disregard for the seriousness of the task in hand for the French.

In a series of tweets today, shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham said England fans had been "let down by a minority", who may have been provoked but were "not blameless.” Mr Burnham said when the terror threat in France was taken into account, it made the "behaviour of these England 'fans' even more embarrassing".

Initially on Saturday, French police appeared to change tactics in their handling of English supporters, adopting a lower key approach that saw more than 5,000 gather to drink and sing in Marseilles old port without trouble.

There were still relatively few arrests by Friday: only 11 arrests in the southern French city in 48 hours, despite 25,000 England fans and 10,000 Russians gathering for Saturday’s match between the two nations. Bizarrely, one of the French troublemakers was arrested in the early hours of Saturday for stealing a shirt from an England fan as he lay on the ground at 1.40am this morning – a crime deemed to be ‘theft with violence.’

Police said that there had been seven people wounded in clashes on Friday – three fans and four police officers. British police have been eager to ensure that their representatives at the tournament – known as "spotters" – are given the opportunity to deal with anti-social behaviour. The UK Football Police Unit briefs these officers to work as ‘cultural interpreters’ for French counterparts, who are instinctively likely to employ a physical response and tear gas.

In hindsight, it would have helped to have opened the Euro 2016 fanzone on Marseilles’s Mediterranean coast, half a mile from the Stade Velodrome, at least 24 hours earlier. That would have allowed fans to drink in a larger area with greater security. Keeping fans in the old port allowed troublemakers, some in balaclavas, from outside Marseilles to arrive looking to provoke violence.