June 17, 2006	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 20, 1427

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BERLIN, June 16: England's fans, so often the pariahs of world football, are making headlines again at the World Cup for all the right reasons.

Wolfgang Niersbach, vice-president of the German organising committee, told journalists at ruling body FIFA's daily news briefing on Friday the behaviour of England's supporters was one of the highlights of the World Cup so far.

“By our estimates there were 60,000 or 70,000 English fans in Nuremberg for the match against Trinidad & Tobago (on Thursday) and their exemplary behaviour was being discussed by many people last night,” he said.

“We would like to say we have tremendous praise for the way the English fans are behaving.”

Only 26 England supporters were detained by police in Nuremberg either before or after England's 2-0 win which secured their passage to the last 16.

Kevin Miles, international coordinator of the (English) Football Supporters Federation, said: “I am delighted to hear the excellent behaviour of England fans has been recognised by the authorities.

“We have always maintained the majority of England fans behave well for the majority of the time.

“Some people seemed hardly to believe that this could happen in the World Cup in Germany too. But I think we've proved over the last two games that English fans have an enormous positive contribution to offer to the atmosphere of the tournament.”Miles also praised local police.

“Credit must go to the German police whose handling of English and all other fans has been excellent,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the British police team working in Germany said: “The behaviour of English fans has been pretty exemplary and given the huge numbers we've seen in the venue cities the arrest figures have been pleasingly low.

“We congratulate the work of the German police. Excellent cooperation between English and German colleagues has so far resulted in a highly successful policing operation.”

The spokeswoman said there had been 76 UK nationals arrested across Germany since the start of the tournament but it was not known whether they were all UK citizens or not.

Niersbach also said the behaviour of Swedish fans in Berlin for Thursday's match against Paraguay was excellent, and that many German fans donned Sweden's yellow shirts in support of the Scandinavians.

“The atmosphere at the stadiums yesterday was incredible,” he said. “The fans are behaving so well, long may it continue.”

There has been only one serious incident of crowd trouble at the finals when 300 hooligans clashed in Dortmund before the Group A match between Germany and Poland on Wednesday.—Reuters