70,000 England fans in town for Saturday's match

Twenty England World Cup fans were arrested in Germany on Saturday night, a British police spokeswoman said yesterday.

She added that 70,000 England fans were thought to have been in Frankfurt for the match. It had been estimated before the tournament that 25,000-30,000 would be in the western German city.

"We understand there were 70,000 English people in Frankfurt last weekend so we see the low figure of arrests as quite positive," the spokeswoman said.

Twelve of the arrests were made in Frankfurt, where Sven-Goran Eriksson's team won their opening Group B match 1-0 against Paraguay, and eight in Cologne.

Two were for alleged assault and criminal damage outside the ground and the pair appeared in court in Frankfurt yesterday, she said.

Four arrests were made at the game, two fans were trying to steal tickets from other England fans and two had swastikas painted on their bodies. The latter two have been bailed to re-appear at a police station but there will be no further action taken against the former pair.

There were also four arrests and fines for criminal damage and public order offences and two for possession of cannabis for which no further action was taken.

The spokeswoman had no details of the arrests in Cologne.