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He added: “If the English do not want to fight we will go looking for them and steal their flags, their scarves and their colours. And then we will burn them.”

The ritual of ambushing rival fans, beating them and stealing their flags and scarves has become a common feature of Polish games. The stolen memorabilia are tied to railings around a pitch and set alight.

After a game involving Wisla Krakow earlier this month, fans of the rival club Cracovia waited to fight in darkened alleyways near the city centre.

“It is what I live for,” said Lukasz Pawlik. “I just want to fight the Wisla fans. To say I hate them is not enough.”

Pawlik, 26, who, like many young Poles on the hooligan scene, is unemployed, said he has been involved in hundreds of fights in the decade he has followed Cracovia.

Dressed entirely in black and ready to put on a black balaclava, he carried what he called his “equipment” — a knife shaped like a miniature axe. He pulled it out from his belt and smiled.

“This equipment is now a part of how I fight and it will taste the blood of a Wisla dog tonight,” he said.

()The shaven-headed Pawlik sat in a bar beneath portraits of former Cracovia players and the late Pope John Paul II.

“He also was a Cracovia fan,” Pawlik said.

A second hooligan who carried a knife with a 5in blade and a rubber hosepipe filled with sand warned: “Tell the English fans we are coming to Germany to hunt them down.

“We will come for them silently and quickly. We hate the Germans and we will fight with them. We admire the English because of their reputation. That’s why we will fight with them. We want to take their reputation as the best fighters.”

Polish police admit they have a severe problem with such hooligans. But unlike their counterparts in England, Germany and Holland, they appear ill-prepared to deal with their fans this summer. Privately, they speak of a lack of political will.

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