If there were a contest for the title of "most stupid fans at the World Cup", two England supporters in Cologne who mislaid their car ahead of tonight's match against Sweden would certainly be in the running.
The fans parked their car in Cologne's old city and, before going off to have a drink, they wrote down what they thought was the German street name. When they returned several hours later, they could no longer find their car. According to this morning's German press, the unnamed England fans, who had driven to the Rhine city from Belgium, then approached two police officers and handed over a crumpled piece of paper with the street name on it. Unfortunately, however, it read - "Einbahnstrasse", the German for one-way street. German officers this morning said they had to carry out an "intensive search" before discovering the missing vehicle in a nearby side street.
This is not the only thing that appears to have gone a bit wrong in Cologne. Although the vast majority of fans have done little over the past 10 days to justify England's lingering reputation in Germany for hooliganism, German police said they arrested eight fans on Monday night - six of them England supporters. The drunken fans attacked 14 police officers with bottles, leaving them with light injuries, police said.
According to the local newspaper, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the brawl began when a drunken England fan tried to hang an England flag over the statue of a the little-known 17th century German general, Jan von Werth. The fan fell off, and when the police moved in to help him, the gesture was misunderstood, with England fans then throwing bottles, the paper said. The fans arrested at Cologne's Alter Markt, or old market, also included a German and a Swede.
This morning Germany's federal police, the Bundespolizei, said extra checks would be carried out on the German border following reports that at least "a dozen" known British hooligans were trying to make their way to Cologne. Some 70,000 England fans travelled to Frankfurt for England's opening match against Paraguay while 40,000 turning up in Nuremberg for the Trinidad & Tobago game. According to the police, 85,000 England fans are expected in Cologne - only 35,000 of them with tickets. Let's hope at least that they manage to find their cars afterwards.
