FOR a moment, I feared the worst.
Albanian football fans squared up to their Italian rivals on the streets of Dortmund before their two teams were due to play each other in the Euros.
They’d been taunting and hurling jibes at each other for hours as the alcohol flowed, and now it threatened to escalate into violence.
Then an extraordinary thing happened.
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One of the Albanians suddenly produced a packet of uncooked spaghetti, and brandishing it in both hands, he marched fearlessly towards the enemy,
An Italian fan dropped to his knees in front of him and begged him for clemency.
But the merciless Albanian duly snapped the spaghetti into tiny pieces and then flung it into the air in a brazen act of desecration towards Italy’s most beloved and iconic national foodstuff – to wild cheers from his mates.
And at that point, all the fans, on both sides, cheered and fell about laughing, and later they were even seen dancing the traditional Albanian line dance, called the Valle, together.
The hilarious pasta-wrecking moment quickly went viral on social media, and sparked an unprecedented food war that has become a joyous antidote to the usual ugly scenes of hooliganism that have blighted most previous European Championships.
When Austria played France, their fans held banners boasting “Schnitzel better than baguette!”
Swiss fans teased Hungarian counterparts with signs screaming “Fondue better than goulash!”
Poles declared “Kielbasa better than Gouda!” when they met the Netherlands.
And the Italians recovered from the spaghetti-snapping to announce “Pasta > Paella” when they played Spain on Thursday night.
So far, I haven’t seen any England fans joining in, unless I missed someone waving a “Roast Beef better than Sarma” flag when we beat Serbia, or “Fish and Chips better than Stegt Flæsk” during our dreary draw with Denmark.
But the replacement of thug wars with food wars is delighting the locals.
“Thank God the violence has not been there,” Hamburg food stall-holder Roland Koch told Reuters. “Instead, we’re seeing a lot of fun and banter between fans like these hilarious ‘food wars’. Just don’t mess with our ‘currywurst’ – or else then there will be trouble, I warn you!”
Now, on one level, this may all sound very, very silly.
But isn’t it a damn sight better than mindless idiots running around trying to kill each other?
So far, aside from a few minor skirmishes, it’s been a notably peaceful tournament.
Perhaps we all learned a lesson from the Qatar World Cup, which was astonishingly well-behaved, and thoroughly enjoyable as a result?
Or perhaps, as has been reported, the police from multiple countries with hardcore troublemakers deserve credit for collaborating to stop them from travelling to the tournament?
Or perhaps I’m just being naïve, and the bad stuff is lurking beneath the surface ready to blow whenever a nation with a hooligan element – of which there are many – gets knocked out?
But for now, there’s a great atmosphere pervading these Euros and I’m all here for it.
And putting on my United Kingdom hat for a moment, I have to say it’s being led by the Scots, who despite the catastrophically bad performance of their team in their opening game against Germany, have been a fantastically fun and entertaining example of fans from bitter rival club sides coming together as one for the national cause.
When Rangers play Celtic, it’s one of the most intimidating, vicious and violent places to ever watch a football match.
But the vast 200,000 strong Tartan Army, full of fans from both teams, just seems to be having a great laugh with no apparent desire to attack either each other or rival fans despite consuming quite staggering amounts of booze.
In fact, they’ve been labelled the “friendliest Army in the world” by German media.
And they’ve been getting in on the food fight action too, with three-time world’s strongest man Tom Stoltman, a highlander known as ‘The Albatross’, menacingly snapping a bar of Toblerone before Scotland’s match with Switzerland, as Line of Duty star Martin Compston cheered him on.
England fans, too, have been getting unusual plaudits for their behaviour.
Yes, there was a punch-up with Serbian fans outside a café, and some of them have understandably irritated their hosts with tediously jingoistic chants of “10 German ‘bombers”, but the authorities have been pleasantly surprised at the lack of any real trouble.
Even Denmark fans provocatively singing “England, England, it’s never coming home” to the tune of ‘Yellow Submarine’ was greeted with laughter, not fists.
And frankly, if we keep playing as badly as did against the Danes, it never will be.
If anything I think our fans have perhaps been too polite – certainly on the terraces where our voices were regularly drowned out by the Danes in the Frankfurt Arena.
Can I respectfully suggest the Three Lions fans give us a little more roar against Slovenia in the final group match?
“The vast majority of England fans in Germany for Euro 2024 are behaving extremely well,” the UK Football Policing Unit said in a welcome statement.
How nice it would be to look back on the Euros 2024 as the tournament where the only battle was over who had the best national dish.
And given England’s is now officially an Indian curry, maybe it’s time to unleash “Chicken Tikka Masala better than Carniolan sausage!” next Tuesday when we play Slovenia.
Not least because I’ve tried both, and it is!
