In his years as a chief superintendent in Nottinghamshire Police, Eddie Curtis has come to know his prey inside out.

"Even if you didn't know the individuals as a spotter, you would know that they were hooligans, it's the way they're dressed, the way they act".

One of the most challenging operations he led was Euro 2000 in Brussels. Belgian police surrounded troublemakers in the near the Grand Place and arrested around 500.

"The interesting thing was you could walk down that group and you could go 'Middlesborough, Tottenham, Leeds, Oldham, Shrewsbury, Newcastle,'" he said.

Curtis calls hooligans "creatures of habit" and has come to know their tactics. During the 1998 World Cup he watched them throw bottles at a family of Tunisian tourists in Marseilles at midday.

Potential

Belgian Police tactics were harsh but effective in Euro 2000

They hit an innocent woman and child and got exactly what they wanted: an incensed local population and a riot.

Despite detailed intelligence gathering Curtis has felt ignored by a government keen to allay public fears that it had football violence under control.

"I can remember talking to television before Brussels and more or less explaining how many people would be there, where the problem was likely to start, at about what time it would start"

In the run up to Euro 2000 a Home Office representative even explained to Curtis that domestic hooliganism was over. They didn't believe that it was just well-policed and the potential for explosive violence abroad remained.

Tear gas

'European governments chickened out of taking away somebody's liberty'

Retired Chief Supt Eddie Curtis

Curtis's main problem is that he could never arrest or detain known hooligans on their way to a match. He might send them home from British air and sea ports three or four times as they tried to get to Brussels but the hooligans' persistence was unmatched by the law.

He said: "There's this big fear that people would rather be free than have some legislation to stop a few football supporters," and that European governments "chickened out of taking away somebody's liberty".

The Belgian police had few such qualms. At one point they tear gassed a bar full of English supporters, including hard core hooligans. "We might not have approved of the methods but they got the right people. They helped the England-Germany game in Charleroi because there were 450 odd people that would not be fuelling the riot," he said.

Curtis fears for future tournaments such as Euro 2004 in Portugal and the 2006 World Cup in Germany unless the football authorities, the government, the clubs and the police begin to work more efficiently together.

Stretched

I would be looking very seriously at Portugal now, a place which is going to be interesting and cheap for people to go

Retired Chief Supt Eddie Curtis

"I would be looking very seriously at Portugal now, a very hot country, a place which is going to be interesting and cheap for people to go." Even the new draconian powers that have been introduced since Euro 2000 have little chance of working, according to Curtis.

"What they actually bring into being doesn't work. You get things like 'We can stop people going abroad, they will have to present their passports at police stations'.

"Great, wonderful, but somebody's got to find those people, somebody's got to make contact with people, somebody's got to make sure they go to the police station, when they go to the police station somebody's got to be there, somebody's got to document that, all those names have got to go to other people who've got to be at hundreds of ports all over the country.

"And of course the Home Office just says things like 'Do it within own resources.' Well police forces are stretched, they don't have those resources, and if government really wanted to do something about it they should attach the resources to it."