Neil Bennett BBC crime correspondent

But as from Saturday the problem of keeping the peace is one that the Portuguese police have to solve

A record number of banning orders have been imposed on English hooligans preventing them from travelling to Portugal for the duration of Euro 2004.

As usual English and Welsh police officers will be on duty in the host country acting as spotters in case any hooligan suspects do slip through the net and get into Portugal.

They will offer advice to the Portuguese but nothing more. They will police the event in their own style.

UK officers will help to spot suspects in Portugal

The omens are promising. The Portuguese have been studying the lessons of previous international football tournaments and are determined not to make the same mistakes.

Evidence gathered from Euro 2000 in Belgium and Holland suggests that serious violence is more likely to break out when police go in hard and early with the riot squads.

That way, isolated outbreaks of drunken misbehaviour can easily escalate.

Forceful police tactics generate a herd mentality and draw in people who might not otherwise have got involved.

The Portuguese have promised to "engage" with England fans - welcoming them as visitors and getting to know them.

That way they believe that trouble is less likely to break out in the first place.

But if it does they will know who the ringleaders are and can then arrest them with targeted snatch squads.

Only if things still get out of hand will the riot police go in.

This approach is accepted by English police as offering the best hope of preventing trouble among the 60,000 or so English fans who are going to Portugal.

But the hosts are, of course, not operating on a wing and a prayer.

They have reintroduced border checks - temporarily setting aside their European Treaty obligations to guarantee free movement of people.

So the police here and in Portugal seem to have got it right.

Now it is over to the English fans and here the omens do not look quite so good.

Intelligence material

The combination of football, 60,000 young Englishmen, sun and some of the cheapest beer in Europe is not a recipe for a quiet June in Lisbon and on the Algarve. May the best team win.

They will also have police and immigration personnel in England to give them the best access to intelligence material gathered by our police.

And they have also promised that anyone who does cause trouble will go before the courts in Portugal and not simply sent home.

That could involve people being guests of the Portuguese prison system for up to 28 days while their cases are processed.