An Oxford soccer fan who claims he was unjustly deported from Belgium during Euro 2000, fears he could be blacklisted from matches despite having no convictions for hooliganism.

David Crosthwaite, of Hornbeam Drive, Northfields, Greater Leys, was arrested with four friends by Belgian police on June 16, the day before the England-Germany clash.

They had been drinking quietly in a Brussels pub. They were held overnight and deported the next day. He said there had been no trouble in the pub or outside.

Mr Crosthwaite, 31, now fears that Home Secretary Jack Straw's plans to ban known or suspected hooligans from travelling abroad, even if they have no convictions, could stop him following the England team and might even lead to him being banned from his beloved Derby County games. Mr Crosthwaite, a maintenance service engineer for Henley-based telecommunications company Datapulse, said: "The Belgian police came in, grabbed us and threw us into a 12ft by 10ft cell.

"They told us we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were just drinking and there was no trouble outside.

"There were some people singing outside, but they had moved off. At first I was shocked, and then anger set in.

"I know I'm innocent and the people I was drinking with were innocent, but my concern is that I'm going to be blacklisted from going to games abroad."

Mr Straw, who has a weekend home in Minster Lovell, said on Radio 4 yesterday that Mr Crosthwaite should have no fears.

But the worried fan added: "I won't believe it until I've got a letter from the police or the Football Association to say I'm not. "We all get tarnished with the same brush. The Belgian police think they will treat all English fans the same. It's all very well to have reassurances but I can't be sure that I won't be sitting on some blacklist.''

Mr Straw said: "The Belgian authorities have admitted publicly that quite a number of people they arrested were entirely innocent.

"I want to reassure Mr Crosthwaite, in fact, I'm answering a parliamentary question about it, that we have no intention whatsoever of publishing the names of people that were communicated to us by the Belgian authorities because that would be grossly unfair to that large, but unidentified, number of people who were innocent but picked up."