Free paella and the music of Chas and Dave was not enough. Perhaps it was naive to think it ever could have been, because the events in Seville on Thursday night were as much a legacy of decades of clashes between English fans, foreign supporters and police that meant a mutual suspicion long ago entered into the collective psyche of all involved.

With Seville already a city on alert because of fears that hooliganism would affect the sombre religious processions to mark Holy Week, the ingredients were present for the fixture to develop a serrated edge.

Despite pre-match warnings to be on their best behaviour and that the police would show zero tolerance to those who appeared to be drunk, Tottenham's followers were never likely to forsake a few pre-game pints or behave as if they were wandering around a library rather than a city that is, in normal times, known for its revelry.

Yet, the morning after the fight before, fans maintained that the police action had been unprovoked and stressed that there had been no trouble between Tottenham and Seville supporters - rather, there was a prevailing atmosphere of bonhomie. But the boisterous nature of the Tottenham fans was apparently interpreted as loutish behaviour by the police, while proscriptive, paranoid policing bred resentment the other way.

The Seville authorities had taken Tottenham fans directly from the airport to a "hospitality zone", an ugly slab of concrete near the stadium, but most did not hang around to sing along to a variety of Spurs musical classics pumped through loudspeakers and drink beer that, at four Euros for a pint, was more expensive than in local bars - nearly all of which were shut in the immediate vicinity.

A small group of Tottenham fans causing trouble outside the Seville team hotel before the game, an aggressive reaction when the police attempted to herd those in the fan zone towards the stadium long before kick off and boorish chanting as mounted police trotted past a pub packed with visiting fans near the stadium: those incidents may have affected the way the riot police behaved inside the stadium.

The temperature in the ground had been raised because, about five minutes before the mass conflict, Seville were awarded a dubious penalty.

It is thought that a policeman barred the way of a fan who wanted to leave his seat to use the toilet. Hands were laid on the officer and his colleagues waded in, turning the flashpoint into a mass confrontation that lasted for several minutes because many Tottenham fans reacted in a hostile fashion, standing their ground and throwing seats.

When the riot police left the away end in the second half, the trouble died down. Yet the police may have felt they needed to be present in numbers because, unlike in the upper tier where there was a fence and rows of empty seats between rival fans, in the lower section - rarely used, the seats are dirty and some are broken - there was just a thin tape.

The decision was made to accommodate as many English fans in the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium as possible when it became clear in the days before the match that if supply did not meet demand, plenty of the ticketless would travel anyway.