Germany: Frankfurt police have praised the 65,000 English fans who peacefully celebrated their weekend World Cup win over Paraguay with only a few minor incidents.
Armed police in full riot gear were braced for the worst but had little to do, with just 12 fans arrested after a full day of heavy drinking under the blazing sun.
"We'd like to praise the fans because, by and large, they behaved very well," said a Frankfurt police spokesman.
A group of England fans were arrested on Saturday afternoon for detonating a smoke bomb, halting train traffic and running across the tracks at the main train station. Outside the station, as English ticket touts tried in vain to flog their tickets, Germany's Lutheran church had organised a rally with the motto: "Let the Kickers Come to Me".
"Of course we want a good World Cup, but I'm here today to share another message with you," said a British man on stage, apparently a former footballer.
"Jesus is alive, he loves you and he's watching you. Yes, even you with the tattoos, drinking and laughing." Around 40,000 England fans had tickets for the match while a further 25,000 gathered on the banks of the River Main to watch the match on huge floating screens.
Afterwards, thousands of pot-bellied England fans stripped to the waist and chugged down litre tankards of beer to celebrate their win.
Frankfurt's Römerberg old town square became a sea of St George flags and by evening most fans were as red - and white - as their flag stripes.
Amused locals quite literally "cleaned up" under their noses, and gathered up hundreds of deposit beer bottles as the England fans swayed and bellowed out football anthems.
As the sun went down, they began endless rounds of 10 German Bombers to the tune of She'll be Coming Round the Mountain.
Leading the fans in song was a 30-something man on top of an old lamp. As he tried to climb down, the lamp head came away with him and he fell three metres to the ground to cheers from the crowd.
As police whisked him away, just after 10pm, the mood turned sour and the first bottle flew, hitting a policewoman on the head. An officer called through a bullhorn: "Dear soccer fans, please stop throwing bottles, please calm down."
As a group of less than 50 fans taunted the police with "In-ger-land" chants, hundreds of others behind them ignored the confrontation or shook their heads in dismay.
"That small group are performing for the cameras and because the cameras are there the police can't do anything, so the fans keep performing," said Mike from Plymouth.
An England supporter in a Wayne Rooney shirt negotiated with police and took hold of the bullhorn, telling the crowd: "Let's all have fun, let's all get pissed but let's not throw bottles."
The stand-off ended by 11pm when the intoxicated crowd drifted off.
Slumped in a corner on a bench was a local drunk with a yellow sign around his neck that read: "Kein Alkohol ist Keine Lösung". No Alcohol is No Solution.
Meanwhile, Over 1,000 German Jews and exiled Iranians marched through Nuremberg yesterday as Iran played Mexico to protest against the anti-Israeli rhetoric of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Protesters dubbed him "the 21st century Hitler" for calling for Israel to be "wiped from the map" and for describing the Holocaust as a "fairytale". Holocaust denial is an offence in Germany.
"If he came to Germany, only his diplomatic passport would prevent his arrest," said Günther Beckstein, Bavaria's interior minister, to the rally. "A criminal like Ahmadinejad is not welcome in Germany."
German authorities have granted Mr Ahmadinejad a visa to travel to the World Cup but he it was vice-president Mohammed Aliabadi who cheered on the Iranian side yesterday.