They always say after major football tournaments (see our guide to the best places to watch Euro 2012) that the winning team will never need to buy a drink in their homeland again. Not quite sure that’s still the case in Greece. Then again, one country’s misery is another’s (Turkish) delight.

Ah, European rivalries. Don’t you just love them? And they don’t come much fiercer than the one between the Netherlands and Germany. Apparently, when I’ve asked in the past, it’s because Dutch caravaners hold up impatient German drivers on the autobahns … nothing to do with the occupation, then.

Now, normally I abhor spitting. And I’m not a great fan of men whose appearance instantly reminds me of a 1970s porn film. But the two came together in perfect symmetry at the 1990 World Cup when adult movie star/brilliant footballer Frank Rijkaard decided that Rudi Völler’s mullet was running low on moisture. There was something magical about those exchanges. They were bizarre, unexpected and of the highest theatre, and following their early dismissal, the rest of the game was one of the best I’ve ever seen.

But nothing compares to the excitement of watching your own team fighting for their survival. For me, ‘hugging strangers’ is the very definition of a game that has everything (they tend to be 2-2 draws that end with England losing), when even the reptiles among us go all tactile.

In 1998, I held a grown man in my arms for ten minutes. We didn’t exchange a word, or even look at one another, but we were bound together in unison: we moved up and down, we shrieked and we groaned, with ecstasy and with agony, and we came … so close. But in the end, Argentina won on penalties.

I never did catch his name, but another had won my heart that night: Michael Owen. Fourteen years on, I’m getting ready to go through it all again.