PRIOR to Saturday in Marseille, the least comfortable I’d ever felt covering England abroad was in Moscow. It is no coincidence.

Whereas football hooliganism in this country tends to be fuelled by alcohol and a sense of misplaced bravado, in Russia it is viewed as a grotesque form of sport. And to the Russian ‘ultras’ who overran Marseille’s Vieux Port district on Saturday, taking on England was like competing in the World Cup final.

It was back in October 2007 that I ventured to Moscow, to watch Steve McClaren’s England suffer a 2-1 defeat in the Luzhniki Stadium that was ultimately crucial in their failure to make Euro 2008.

It was a far from pleasant experience. With around 2,000 England supporters present, Moscow was a distinctly unfriendly place, with few people willing to converse directly with an alien group that seemed to be viewed as ‘the enemy’ from the outset. I distinctly remember walking into a shop to buy a bottle of water, and being yelled at in Russian by a man manically pointing towards the door.

The night of the game was worse, with the now-familiar gangs of black-clad hooligans patrolling the side-streets around the stadium. As a journalist, I was safely in the ground three or four hours before kick-off, but I know of fans who were set upon as they walked to the stadium in the hour or so before the game, with the police stood by watching.

Russian domestic football is blighted by hooliganism and racism, and in many ways is comparable to the English game in the 1980s. Indeed, the Russian hooligan groups look at the behaviour of English fans in much of the 1980s with a mixture of envy and respect. They organise themselves into “crews” to mimic the English gangs that ransacked Europe repeatedly three decades ago, and still regard England as the cradle of football violence.

That was the backdrop to Saturday’s indiscriminate trouble, with an estimated 300-or-so hardcore Russian ‘ultras’ embarking on a mission to prove some sort of point about the new hierarchy in their violent, distorted world.

In order to increase their chances of causing mayhem, gangs from rival clubs joined up for what they clearly perceived to be the common national good, with emblems from leading clubs Spartak Moscow, CSKA Moscow and Zenit St Petersburg on display. For 51 weeks of the year, those groups fight against each other. For one week only, rivalries were put aside to take on the English.

The overseas press agency, AFP, yesterday quoted a Lokomotiv Moscow supporter, Vladimir, married with two children, who spoke on condition his surname was not used.

“The English are big older men who drink a lot of beer,” he said. “Fans or hooligans from Russia are mainly younger, aged 20-30, and at home most of them are into sports. They do sports like boxing or all kinds of martial arts.

“The aim is to come and prove that English fans aren’t hooligans, they don’t know how to fight. A lot of Russian guys come specially with this aim.

‘The English use chairs and bottles – the Russian style is only fists. Using weapons causes a lot of unnecessary injuries, for us it’s like sport. We don’t have a desire to kill or injure – there is a desire to show our strength.”

There were certainly weapons on display in Marseille, however, with the ultras that tore through the Old Port and areas close to the stadium wearing bum bags to carry their knuckle-dusters and martial arts-style fighting gloves.

A number are understood to have returned to Russia, seemingly satisfied that their job is done, but the fear is that having made their point once, they will be tempted to wreak further chaos when they have the chance to encounter England fans again in the next few days. And to add further fuel to an already-raging inferno, there are reports of English hooligan groups steeling themselves for more mayhem in Northern France in the next few days.

Tomorrow, Russia take on Slovakia in Lille. The day after, England play Wales in Lens. But with Lens boasting a population around the same size as Billingham, it has long been accepted that the town’s infrastructure will be unable to cope with the demand to watch one of the most eagerly-awaited games of the tournament.

So where have the England fans been instructed to stay? Lille. Thanks to UEFA’s incompetent scheduling and choice of venues, thousands of England supporters have booked rooms in the very city where the Russian contingent are also ensconced following last weekend’s violence at the opposite end of France.

“We’re trying to change our hotel bookings, but it’s not proving that easy,” said Rob Moss, an England fan from Washington who has tickets for all three group games. “We’re trying to do the match out of Paris because we don’t want to be in Lille. But it’s probably going to cost us about £500 to change things at this late stage.”