Keegan welcomes action on fans

On the day when two known English football hooligans were turned back from trying to enter Holland for Euro 2000, the England manager Kevin Keegan yesterday pleaded for England's fans to try and recreate the mood of euphoria which accompanied Euro 96, and called for more fans to be refused entry to Belgium and Holland if their motives were the opposite of that.

"What we desperately don't want," said Keegan, "is the wrong sort of people going for the wrong sort of reasons to do the wrong sort of things."

It was Keegan's most outspoken offering yet in the anxious debate concerning England's followers and what mayhem they may cause over the coming weeks. It came on the day Keegan had a 20-minute telephone conversation with Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary, a discussion Keegan said he found: "Very interesting and enlightening."

Hours earlier Straw had announced what British police's special football squad had considered a significant breakthrough when two England fans, one at Amsterdam's Schipol airport and the other at Driebergen, were refused entry by the Dutch police after being tipped off by their English counterparts that the two men were both subjects of domestic bans at football grounds but had not been found guilty of previous illegal behaviour on England trips.

English law means that the two men cannot be stopped at British borders, the situation that applies to all England supporters except the 90 hooligans who have been found guilty in the past of offences and who have restricted movement during the course of the tournament.

But both Belgian and Dutch authorities have the power to refuse admission to their countries to anyone they even suspect of causing disorder. They appear intent on using this weapon vigorously over the next five days when tens of thousands of fans from as far as Turkey and Portugal converge on the two relatively compact states.

All police leave in Belgium and Holland has been cancelled while yesterday non-violent inmates of Belgian prisons began to be released to leave room for the hundreds the authorities expect to lock up over the three weeks.

England fans now know what they could receive. Keegan welcomed the developments. For the first time, linking English crowd violence to the ability of his players to concentrate on football, Keegan said: "Any fans going for their own reasons, I would like to see turned back. They're not helpful to us. We desperately want the support that goes with being part of the England set-up, that's vital to us, but it has to be the right support. We want the passion, we want the support, but we don't want the stupidity.

"It's not helpful to Kevin Keegan certainly, but it's not helpful to the team either and that's more important. We want to recreate the spirit of Euro 96 because I think that's when it was at its best. I got the feeling (from Jack Straw) that it will be very, very tough for anybody stepping out of line. That will be welcomed by everybody in football. What we are saying is enough is enough. We're going to sort it out."

England depart for the small Belgian town of Spa this morning and play their first game against Portugal in Eindhoven on Monday evening. Causing greater concern, however, is England's meeting with Germany in the steep-sided, 30,000 capacity stadium in Charleroi on Saturday week. But Keegan said yesterday that he has long thought of the Stade Communal ground as a: "Fantastic football stadium. When I went there I always found it easy to imagine it full.

"It was never going to be big enough to hold all the people who want to go but neither would Rotterdam or Eindhoven. By the nature of the fixture everybody wants to go and watch it. It's what I would call a superb football stadium."