England face yet more national embarrassment from drink-fuelled fans because fixture scheduling puts them in Prague on a Friday night in October for their next away match, Britain's top football police officer has warned.
Deputy Chief Constable Mark Roberts, head of the UK football policing unit, said that the FA's attempts to prevent idiots drinking to excess and singing offensive songs had regrettably failed in Portugal this week, where bottles were hurled at police and locals.
The FA produced a film, 'Don't be that Idiot' before the trip. But Mr Roberts said: 'Sadly, that idiot came to Portugal and brought 20 of his friends.'
The frustration for police is fixture schedulers staging matches in accessible, popular drinking cities, often on Friday nights.
'We get the same factors contributing to scenes which become messy,' he said. 'We've seen it now in Seville, Amsterdam and Portugal. It concerns us that the next away game is in Prague.'
England play the Czech Republic in a European Championships qualifier on Friday October 11.
A minority of fans singing songs about the IRA and the Second World War threw bottles at police in the small city of Guimares and yet more were seen by officers verbally abusing a Dutch couple on Wednesday lunchtime, simply because they walked past them in orange team jerseys.
On Thursday, footage also emerged of an England fan burning a Portuguese flag while two others were filmed diving into a fountain in the city centre.
Police are scrutinising social media footage to identify and impose banning orders on the drunken louts who have brought shame on the country. Some perpetrators will be intercepted at airports on their return.
Mr Roberts pleaded with the respectable majority of England fans to walk away from the idiots.
He said: 'People say "it was nothing to do with us" but common sense comes into play and people should walk away. We need the decent people to alienate the idiots.
'Twenty of them on their own would be less inclined to behave like that than when in a group of 500.'