Kevin Miles also questioned the wisdom of staging the volatile Group B fixture in Marseille following the sickening violence which has marred the start of the tournament.

One English fan was fighting for his life on Sunday after being set upon by a gang of ‘ultras’ from Moscow, with police confirming 35 people had been injured in the bloody scenes.

The Russian Football Union recently had the threat of a three-match stadium closure over the behaviour of their fans at the last Euros four years ago.

Sixteen years ago, England were almost kicked out of Euro 2000 after their fans rioted in Charleroi following more hooliganism in Marseille at the 1998 World Cup.

Miles, who was forced to flee to safety during Saturday’s disturbances said:

“At Euro 2000, England were threatened with exclusion from the tournament because of behaviour outside the stadium which was of much less severity than what took place on the streets of Marseille by Russian fans.

"If there could be a threat to England’s participation at Euro 2000 because of lesser behavioural problems outside the ground then surely there has to be a question over Russia’s continued participation in this tournament based on what we saw in the stadium. There are not isolated incidents.”

There were fears over the England-Russia game ever since they were drawn to play each other, particularly with the game being in Marseille.

Uefa could have moved the game to a lower-risk venue but chose not to.

Miles, who was running the fans embassy in Marseille, said:

“The combination of factors that have come together here to produce the heady cocktail of events that have unfolded over the last few days would not have happened in any other combination of opponents and venue.”

Saturday was the climax of three nights of violence in the city, which involved locals as well as travelling fans.

Miles said: “The primary responsibility obviously has to go with those people who are organising attacks. “There’s no question that groups of locals were planning and carrying out attacks on English football fans, for no other reason than they were English football fans. “That was similarly replicated by some very hardcore Russian hooligan groups who clearly formed up in advance for attacks they looked like they’d trained months for. “There’s got to be a huge question mark about the policing. The first responsibility of a police force at a tournament is to guarantee the safety of people coming to watch it, and they singularly failed to do that. “We’ve observed the French police watching some of those groups form up together, march across the square and then launch into an attack on English football fans while doing nothing to prevent it. “The policing that does happen is tear gas being fired into areas where disturbances are taking place, which doesn’t differentiate between perpetrators and victims. “To cap it all, there are no arrests. Nobody gets nicked for this. “Which means all these Russian hooligans think, ‘We got away with that. We can do that again’.”

Indeed, England, Wales and Russia fans are expected to all be in Lille this week ahead of the next Group B fixtures there and in nearby Lens.