The next day England beat Tunisia 2-0 but the violence continued, both around the ground and at the beach fan zone, where again running battles continued into the night.
Dozens of people were injured, over 100 arrested or deported and several England supporters were later jailed.
Two years on and front-page pictures of water canon-toting armoured cars surrounding a negligible stand-off with German fans in the Belgian city of Charleroi ahead of a Euro 2000 match were the final straw for British politicians.
They introduced the Football (Disorder) Act that gave courts the power to confiscate the passports not just of convicted football hooligans but also of those police suspected might be involved in violence.
Thousands of fans quickly found themselves unable to travel and the World Cup and European Championship tournaments since then have been largely free from trouble, despite England fans continuing to travel in mind-boggling numbers.
About 80,000 of them filled the German city of Gelsenkirchen for a 2006 World Cup quarter-final against Portugal and everything passed without major incident. Just as many - minus almost 2,000 serving banning orders - are expected to descend on Marseille this weekend, with another 20,000 Russia fans, themselves with something of a reputation for trouble, added to the mix.
But the majority of today's England supporters are proud of their ability to support the team in huge numbers without getting involved in the trouble that scarred so many previous events.
"We've come over for four days, none of us have tickets but it should be a great crack," Darren, a "middle-aged" Everton fan, told Reuters on the street outside The Victoria.
"We've read about threats from hard-core Russians but there's always stuff like that and nowadays everybody just wants to have a laugh and see the game. "I've been to a few tournaments with England and I've hardly seen any trouble."
-AAP