THE man in the England thong seemed very pleased with himself. He stood all but naked, plastic pint of lager in hand and smiled in apparent satisfaction as he surveyed his comrades in their various states of drunkenness and undress.

Football club banners and England flags were draped over statues and fountains in what was effectively an occupation of an imposing square in the heart of a busy foreign city.

An English club's away match in a European competition.

One man who clearly wasn't going to make it to the match lay sprawled at the foot of a statue as another drinker wandered past me on his way to get a refill.

His pendulous beer gut was more or less covered by a T-shirt which bore the depressing slogan: "Made in England".

As I crossed the road, a taxi sped past. Its back seat window was rolled down and a bleary-eyed fan lolled out, yelling football chants.

It wasn't violent, and as an English speaker, it was fairly obvious to me the drinkers were pretty much good-natured.

But their more civilised fellow fans looking on from the more civilised bars around the square didn't think it was a particularly good advertisement for the English abroad.

"Not very edifying, is it?" mused one in my earshot.

As for the locals, their reaction was anything from amazement to resignation.

Some stood and stared; others grabbed their children by the hand and put on a determined burst of speed as they passed through the crowd.

There were no fights, no mass arrests; the English club, Middlesbrough, lost, the fans drowned their sorrows and they went home, many of them, presumably, with thick heads and empty wallets.

This will probably be notched up as a success as far as the behaviour of English fans was concerned.

I'm not sure whether the members of the host nation who passed through the square that day would agree.

It's not the only time I've seen football fans away from home, in a foreign land; once, in particular, I saw many Scottish supporters in Barcelona.

But their impact was quite different; they stood out in their kilts and scarves, but they mingled with the locals instead of hanging around together in one great mass.

The result? They didn't seem so threatening.

The English fans I saw a couple of weeks ago probably didn't even realise how intimidating they looked, or how provocative what they were doing appeared from the outside.

But I wonder what kind of welcome their opponents would have got had they attempted to set up the same sort of 'HQ' in an English town.

Somehow, I don't think we would have been quite so tolerant.

The day after we saw these fans, our holiday took a turn for the worse when our car was broken into.

It was our fault for leaving a bag inside it, even though we locked it up and thought everything was properly out of sight.

Everyone from the hotelier to the police and the tourist office was full of sympathy for us, and they were all at pains to say they hoped it wouldn't spoil our impression of their country. And yet, despite everything, it has.

With so many other places we could choose to visit, why should we return to a place where we have had a bad experience?

Which makes me wonder how many people who could have brought their tourist money to England stay away because of the impression we can create when we visit them.

Updated: 08:49 Wednesday, March 30, 2005