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The Euro 2004 tournament came spectacularly to life on Sunday when two stoppage time goals from Zinedine Zidane gave champions France a miracle escape from defeat as they beat England 2-1.

In a dramatic and high quality game which put the three previous matches of the tournament's opening weekend firmly in the shade, the French midfielder wrote an extraordinary script even by his own standards.

England led 1-0 at Lisbon's Luz stadium thanks to a Frank Lampard goal in the 38th minute and, though Fabien Barthez saved a David Beckham penalty in the 73rd minute, France looked set for their first defeat in 16 months.

But Zidane, the World Player of the Year, fired home a free kick in the first of three minutes of time added on for stoppages and then grabbed an unlikely winner in the final seconds with a penalty after Thierry Henry was brought down by England keeper David James.

The match switched attention back to the pitch after a weekend which seemed more focussed on whether there would be trouble from the tens of thousands of England fans who have flooded into Portugal for the three-week tournament.

HIGH RISK

The match itself, the first of the tournament to be identified by organisers as a high risk game, took place in a relatively peaceful atmosphere.

There was boisterous activity during the day in Lisbon's squares and on the waterfront but no reports of serious crowd trouble, although minor disturbances in Lisbon's main Rossio Square had resulted some arrests over the weekend.

Police were massed in central Lisbon as fans poured into the city after the match to prevent the risk of violence from dejected England supporters.

The France v England encounter had been widely anticipated as one of the tournament highlights but few could have imagined just how dramatic it would be.

A match of nerve-jangling tension ended in a reversal of fortunes matched in recent years at such a level only by Manchester United's 2-1 Champions League final victory over Bayern Munich in 1999, and France's own 2-1 extra time win over Italy in the Euro 2000 final.

In both those games, a team trailing 1-0 going into the last minute escaped with an improbable 2-1 victory.

The match was a welcome highpoint after the tedium of the 0-0 draw between Croatia and Switzerland, also in Group B, earlier at Leiria.

That match was notable only for brave Swiss resistance after midfielder Johann Vogel was sent off in the 50th minute and a rash of yellow cards to both teams in an encounter which was ugly in every sense.