It is astonishing that anyone can claim the fight against terrorism as an excuse to allow football hooliganism to go unchecked.

When I wrote an article titled ‘Should France be allowed to host Euro 2016?‘ it was a rhetorical question, meant, more than anything else, to emphasise the hypocrisy of the media in finding every reason under the sun why the likes of Brazil, Ukraine and South Africa shouldn’t have been able to host tournaments, yet refusing to question the French after security failures led to repeated terrorist attacks.

At the time I couldn’t possibly have imagined that three days into the competition, Euro 2016 looks like it could end up being the worst tournament of all time.

The most disgraceful scenes of European football violence in decades have been seen between England and Russia fans in Marseille. And even in matches like Northern Ireland v Poland, where fans have behaved impeccably, some French ultras seem to have been so outraged by the site of foreign supporters enjoying themselves that they have taken it on themselves to start a fight.

But back to the scenes in Marseille. While England fans were clearly involved in the fighting, there has been no evidence that they started it. One of the most ridiculous arguments I’ve seen in condemning England fans is that the French police are dedicating all their efforts to the fight against terrorism, and it’s downright selfish of the England fans to be out singing in local bars, especially when the songs are less than politically correct.

Of course any England fans who responded by throwing chairs at police should be condemned as should any who chased after Russian hooligans rather than walking away. But it is clear that the naive police response, as much as anything, aggravated the violence and put England fans in an even more dangerous situation that was not of their own making.

And to say that because they went to a football tournament and were binge drinking in local bars, England fans brought attacks from Marseille fans, Russian fans and the French police on themselves seems a bit like arguing that rape victims bring sex attacks on themselves if they go to a nightclub, drink a lot and dance ‘suggestively’.

As for the commitment of the French police to fighting terrorism, when did that become mutually exclusive to fighting hooliganism? If you can’t live up to the basic responsibility of doing both then there is absolutely no way you should be hosting an international football tournament.

In the build up to Euro 96, England was a football pariah, even more so than Russia today. Hooliganism was rife and the IRA were just as much a threat as ISIS nowadays. However the country came together and showed pride in proving the critics in domestic and international media wrong and setting a good example which would change the face of English football, in a positive way, forever.

Reports from Marseille suggested that the response of the French police to everything was to fire tear gas, sometimes even before any violence started. Not only was this clearly an overreaction, but it also provided cover for Russian and Marseille fans to make their attacks and get away without being detected.

An article in The Independent (incidentally critical of England’s supporters) said that in a similar situation in a friendly in Turin, Italy’s Carabinieri were ready to wade into England fans all guns blazing but first liaised with UK police ‘spotters’ who explained that the fans were unlikely to get violent.

In the case of Euro 2016, France ludicrously requested less British police to act as ‘cultural interpreters’ than Germany had in World Cup 2006, even though there are three times as many home nations present this time.

The whole weekend was a complete contrast to my experiences at the World Cup in Brazil. An hour after England’s final game against Costa Rica, I was with hundreds of England fans still inside the stadium partying when the police were asking them to leave. But I was also looking carefully over my shoulder because I’d been to Brazilian league games and seen that when fans there behaved in the same way, the police would rapidly start firing rubber bullets.

However, in this case the Brazilian police just stood there smiling and gently ushered the England fans out of the stadium without any trouble. Quite simply, they knew the value of portraying their country in the best possible way to foreigners during a tournament and therefore took a different approach to an ordinary league game.

The one thing that wasn’t the fault of the French authorities was the fact a high-risk match between England and Russia was held in the powder keg that is Marseille. That was the fault of UEFA for having a completely random draw as far as the stadiums where matches would be played were concerned.

However, knowing the dangers, it appears the French chose to have no segregation between the Russian section and the neutral section which was filled mainly with England fans. It also appears that they had no police in the stadium to react to the incident.

While I’ve been to games in places like Argentina and Serbia where police will not enter the stands under any circumstances and fans know the risks of attending, it’s hard to understand in what world the French police think this is an acceptable situation for fans at an international tournament that should be family-friendly.

At a bare minimum, the attitude of the French police has to come into question. Where previous hosts I have mentioned were hosting their first major tournaments in decades, and sometimes in history, France has hosted three in 32 years. Maybe they have become arrogant and started to think that international football fans should feel privileged to be visiting France, and not the other way around.

Maybe it is this lack of care that has contributed to the shambles that has been Euro 2016 so far. Maybe France could even look to previous European Championship hosts Poland and Ukraine, for advice on how to treat their guests properly.