I turned away from the art deco splendour of Highbury’s old main stand, its red and white façade and marble halls retained and encasing expensive apartments, then walked down Avenell Road, Aubert Park and onto Drayton Park.

Wow! The street was full of German men in ill-fitting jeans and trainers, which really should have been better given they hailed from the country of Adidas and Puma. This vast assemblage of men resembling extras from the old TV show Auf Wiedersehen, Pet were beery and friendly as they filled the Park Café, Drayton Park pub and the Highbury Library, a café whose name is steeped in irony given the old stadium’s reputation for not being the loudest football ground.

It started to rain and I took shelter under an apartment block. Hundreds did the same. A Köln fan offered me a beer. Two other Germans explained that they were Borussia Dortmund fans (the clubs get on well) and they’d been at Wembley the previous night, where Tottenham actually won in their temporary home. Most didn't have tickets.

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I spoke to several. They said similar – that they’d waited 25 years for European football, that London was easy to get to, that they’d received a measly 2,900 allocation, but that around 10,000 had obtained tickets elsewhere. They’d bought them from Arsenal fans, from German friends in London. Thousands of them wanted to see their team and make the trip.

“You were invited to have a party in our country when we staged the World Cup in 2006 and came without tickets to our fan parks,” said Florian from Cologne. “We’re bringing the party to London.”

They weren’t like the drunken rabble of Glasgow Rangers fans who descended on Manchester for the 2008 UEFA Cup final, but in control and pleasant to be around. Eighty minutes before kick-off I walked onto the main bridge to enter the stadium. It was full of travelling fans who’d been stopped by police from going any further. The mood was orderly, good-natured.

I tried to move through the crowd.

“Sorry, sir,” said a fan in English. “We have to stop here. We have been told to wait.” He could not have been more polite. I walked back around the stadium to approach it from Hornsey Road, where I spotted the first Arsenal fans, a small gaggle standing near a young lad selling The Gooner fanzine. Köln fans were everywhere. I saw no trouble, no aggression, no animosity. These weren’t Roman ultras bent on violence, but the huge numbers did cause congestion. Then a small group, perhaps 50, tried to rush the turnstiles; aggressive little arseholes who pulled their hoods down to conceal their identity. Every team has their idiots. I once watched my brother play at Barrow away in front of 585 on a Tuesday night and was asked if his team had brought a firm. They’d “brought” 28 elderly anoraks.

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Inside the stadium, Köln fans who’d bought tickets in the home end tried to get in the away end by climbing over a small waist-height barrier. Stewards tried to prevent them. Police were called and order was restored. It was the only trouble I saw all night. There were five arrests from an estimated 20,000 travelling fans.

I watch football around the world as part of my job, following derbies and mixing with fans. It was not what you’d normally see at the Emirates and it should never be condoned, but it was a small flare up which was well managed by police and stewards.

It became clear that there were thousands of Germans in home sections of England’s second biggest club stadium, most of them around their allocated away end.

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FC Köln were getting 50,000 average crowds when they were in Germany’s second tier. They’re a huge, big city club. Perhaps because they’ve not sold their soul to become Champions League regulars, their enormous match-going following remains undiminished and I journeyed to Cologne to write about them three years ago.

“Around 98 per cent of the fans at FC Koln matches are from Koln,” explained Vincent Leggett, who has lived in Germany’s fourth biggest city since 1990. “It’s an extension of the community. The players feel like they’re letting them down if they don’t play well.”

“We feel a very strong connection with the crowd,” explained Spaniard Roman Golobart, who appreciated playing in front of 50,000 for second division Koln after moving from Wigan Athletic. “That’s at least ten times the crowd you’d get in the Spanish second division. We’re the 13th best-supported team in Europe and we’re in the second division. We took 10,000 fans to Bochum. We applaud the fans, we see them at training. We think they’re crazy at times, but it’s a wonderful atmosphere in which to play football.”

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The Emirates isn’t. Arsenal are a great club with thousands of switched on fans who cringe at the assorted cast of clowns on Arsenal Fans TV. But no Arsenal fan pretends their home is a cauldron of excitement. It frustrates many as much as it does Arsene Wenger, but Arsenal are not alone. All-seater stadia and rising ticket prices made top-flight football less accessible to those who’d once supported it. Every big English ground has seen the atmosphere flatten.

It was anything but when the game started. The noise was immense; the Koln fans even stirred home fans from their slumber. The only aggression I saw was from an Arsenal fan screaming at a fellow Arsenal fan who did little but moan.

Koln got their wonder goal to take the lead and you could hear the noise back over the Rhine. “We pledge to you here our loyalty and honour,” sang an estimated 12,000 of them at the start of the second half. “We stand by you, FC Köln and we walk with you, through fire if it must be, remaining always by your side.”

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A small pocket of Arsenal fans tried to hit back with an “Arse-nal” chant. Heavily outnumbered, it was a struggle. Yet there was no trouble.

On the pitch Arsenal surged back and deserved their win. The visiting players saluted their passionate fans. The connection was genuine and more meaningful than the usual identikit platitudes players dole out on social media over here, thanking the fans.

In Koln it’ll be remembered as a great trip. As it should be.

“They were very clever,” said Arsene Wenger when talking about how visiting fans had got tickets. “They got everywhere.” They were and they reminded English football what a great atmosphere is really like.

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