The taunts of English louts are being met with easy-going tolerance, writes Emmet Malone

Aboard planes, trains and a surprising number of camper vans, the English fans continued to pour into Nuremberg yesterday. German police said up to 60,000 were likely to be in the area by kick-off against Trinidad and Tobago, with fewer than half gaining admission to the game.

Many had arrived by the previous night when bars around the city's old quarter were packed. At four o'clock in the morning hundreds had converged on the central rail station, but while local police and supporters of other countries were subjected to persistent taunts, mainly about the second World War, there was little real trouble. Only five arrests were made overnight, compared to several hundred in the context of the game between Germany and Poland in Dortmund.

Finnegan's Irish bar in Königstrasse, just 100 metres from the main rail station, was again a major gathering point for the English yesterday. In the build-up to the game, hundreds regaled the locals with repeated renditions of what has turned out to be their favourite song on this trip, Ten German Bombers (sung to the tune of Ten Green Bottles). Some wore T-shirts bearing the lyrics while others waved inflatable Spitfires.

A number of fans wore modified England shirts with two stars instead of one above the emblem, signifying, one explained, their 100 per cent record in world wars.

Just beside the stadium where yesterday's game was held in the suburb of Luitpoldhain lies the infamous Zeppelintribune, the site of the Nazi rallies that attracted crowds of up to 250,000 between 1933 and 1938. There has been a steady stream of English supporters there in recent days, and a number have been cautioned by police after giving Nazi salutes from the raised area overlooking the parade grounds, which are currently being used by World Cup support staff. Repeat offenders risked being prosecuted, said a senior officer.

For the most part, the police and the local citizenry have displayed good-natured tolerance toward the louts.

Relations between the various other sets of travelling fans have been excellent, attempts at segregation breaking down almost completely at most games.

"Fan-fests" have been organised by several cities, often attracting tens of thousands of supporters from competing countries to large parks and football stadiums, where games have been shown on big screens. By all accounts, they have gone extremely well, with hardly any serious incidents reported.

Hundreds of English supporters with a record of troublemaking have, however, been detained at ports and airports and prevented travelling to Germany. British undercover police have been mingling with fans and acting as spotters for their German counterparts. Similar measures taken ahead of the Dortmund game helped in the detention of some 400 "known troublemakers", a mixture of Germans and Poles, ahead of kick-off.

Reacting to what he described as the "plain bad manners" being shown by travelling England fans to their German hosts, however, the British ambassador Peter Torry described the offenders as "great fat, uncouth, bad-mannered people". He said he wished they could see how they appeared to others.

Torry argued that many of the problems were the result of excessive drinking, after which people "tend to do things that, with the benefit of hindsight, they later regret".

Some attempts to play down Nuremberg's past have,meanwhile, been slightly comical. One website, which featured a good deal of locally generated advertising, claimed the city was best known for its confectionary and mediaeval tapestries.

Torry insisted, however, "No city has done more to come to terms with what happened."

Many of its current visitors, it seems, are lagging some way behind.