Sunday's second FA Cup semi-final between holders Chelsea and Manchester City was always going to overshadow the first between Wigan Athletic and Millwall, and that will still be the case despite the violence at Wembley on Saturday.
Eleven Millwall fans were arrested and four police officers suffered injuries after Millwall fans fought with each other in scenes now rarely seen at English grounds -- and even more rarely at Wembley -- as their team were beaten 2-0 by Wigan who reached the FA Cup final for the first time in their 81-year-history.
Shocking pictures of the violence were televised around the world as a minority of Millwall fans among the 30,000-plus in their end of the ground turned their back on a very good game which Premier League Wigan deservedly won albeit against a well-organised but ultimately outclassed Championship (second-tier) side.
Following statements made by the Football Association, the Metropolitan Police and Millwall FC on Saturday night, investigations have started to find the trouble-makers and ascertain what started the trouble and marred one of the showpiece occasions of the English season.
An eyewitness sitting among the Millwall fans told the Mail on Sunday that trouble began after a child was knocked to the ground by a drunken fan.
The eyewitness, a Millwall season ticket-holder, sitting close to where the fighting started, told the newspaper: "This drunken guy came back to his seat and knocked a little boy over. The bloke refused to apologise to the child or his father and the exchange soon became very heated.
"Before you knew it two groups of mates had formed and punches were being thrown. There were children around and some of them got scared and upset and needed to be taken outside.
"After a while the fighting died down but then it started again and was stop-start all the way through the second half.
"People were calling on the police to get involved, but it took them the best part of 30 minutes to intervene and by that time it was too late. Between 10-15 police eventually acted but they were chased out. The stewards were nowhere to be seen. Totally useless."
The violence could be seen clearly from the nearby press seats at Wembley with the reporters watching in disbelief as the fighting took hold with stewards and police nowhere to be seen.
VIOLENT HISTORY
Millwall fans have a long history of violence and their old ground The Den was closed by the authorities in 1920, 1934 and 1950 because of crowd trouble. In 1985 Millwall fans rioted at Luton during an FA Cup quarter-final, still one of the worst single outbreaks in English soccer's long association with hooliganism.
Millwall has worked hard to change its image of a downtrodden working class outlaw club, but Saturday's violence is likely to undo a lot of that effort.
The club said in a statement that it would ban indefinitely any fans found guilty of being involved in Saturday's mayhem, and with the police and FA working in tandem, what happened at Wembley is unlikely to be repeated elsewhere, simply because most supporters of the same club don't tend to fight each other.
Sunday's semi-final at least gives Wembley, and English soccer, an immediate opportunity to shift the focus to where it matters most -- on the pitch -- with either holders Chelsea or Premier League champions Manchester City set to return to the venue to face Wigan in the final on May 11.