It is half past two in the sweltering heat of a Mediterranean summer's day at the Gare St Charles in Marseilles. The Norwegian fans have arrived in town for Norway's second round World Cup game with Italy.
The train discharges its load of noisy great Nordic types, many of them peeling pink with sunburn and nearly all of them sporting shorts that display awesome calf muscles of the tree-trunk variety. Beer has been consumed, horns are blaring, songs are being sung and the whole cacophony is distinctly not sotto voce.
This is Marseilles, remember, the city which only two weeks earlier had witnessed serious riots involving English and Tunisian fans as well as Marseilles locals. Not surprisingly, Marseilles commuters cast a wary eye on the Norwegian fans.
Yet, as one French woman struggles off the train weighed down by two heavy suitcases, one of the fans leaves off singing and walks across to her with a big grin to pick up her luggage. The fan then accompanies the woman the full length of the platform, making little of the seemingly heavy load and, given an apparent lack of French, communicates by means of sheepish grins. When he gets to the taxi rank, the Norwegian sets down the luggage, bows to the woman and waves goodbye :
"Ooh la la, ils sont gentils, ces Norwegiens. Ce n'est pas comme les Anglais", the woman comments to her friend.
Indeed, all fans are not like the English fans, or to be more precise, like a small minority of violent-minded, racist and xenophobic English fans. Media attention regarding fans at France '98 has inevitably concentrated on the Marseilles riots and on the arguably more serious incident in Lens where German neo-Nazis so viciously attacked gendarme Daniel Nivet that he is still in a coma.
Such a focus of attention, if understandable, has tended to overshadow both the "good news" concerning the joyous, festive atmosphere created by many fans at this World Cup and also the changing nature of the fan him and herself and the fans' role in the great World Cup spectacle itself.
From the opening day and the opening match, Brazil v Scotland, it was obvious that 99.9 per cent of fans at France '98 were determined to have a good time. Scottish fans mixed their traditional kilts with Brazilian shirts, while tartan shirts were being worn by some lithesome, olive-skinned types who certainly had not picked up their suntans on the Forth of Clyde.
From Montpelier to Marseilles and from Nantes to Bordeaux, rival fans mingled cheerfully before games, busily engaged in a living theatre version of United Colours of Benetton, in which intercultural exchanges took place to the rhythmic beat of the ever present Samba-style percussion bands laid on by the organisers.
Nigerians danced with Spaniards, Italians exchanged shirts with Chileans, Tunisians and Colombians exchanged little badges, Iranians kissed Americans and one couple, a Brazilian woman and a Norwegian man, even got married at the Velodrome pitch in front of thousands of fans just hours before Norway met Brazil in a first round game.
TV viewers may have noticed that nearly all the fans at France '98 seem to have painted their faces, some in full immersion style and some with discreet little marks on their cheeks.
The explanation for the sudden burst of face-painting is to be found outside the stadia of France '98 where helpers offer every fan a little palette. Few fans, when offered the paints in the heat of match-day excitement, can refuse - and that leaves us with the entertaining spectacle of middle-aged, middle-class Brazilians, Argentines, Germans, Italians, French etc daubed like an "Ultra" from the Kop (Liverpool) or the Curva Sud (Rome).
Nor is the fan just there to watch the game, at least not according to the France '98 organisation. Fifteen minutes before the beginning of every match, an announcement is made:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, television viewers from all round are about to join us. You, too, are part of this great spectacle, actors in this great drama. Stand by to welcome the teams, on the word "tifo" - five, four, three, two, one, Tifo!"
So, there you have it. Once, the only protagonists at a World Cup were the players, the occasionally flamboyant manager and the inevitably controversial referee. Nowadays, the fans are an essential part of the cast.
Yet in the brave new world of soccerbiz, the overgenerous ticket allocations made to corporate sponsors have tended to work against genuine fans - many of whom, after following their side the length of their continent in qualifying games, have had to pay up to 10 times face value for black market tickets to attend matches at France '98. One example will suffice - officially, 5,000 tickets were allocated to English fans for England-Romania while in reality some 25,000 English fans attended the match, so 80 per cent of the English fans (who caused no trouble at this game) had bought their tickets from touts.
German fan organiser, Micael Gabriel, probably speaks for many when he says that fans feel "the game has been stolen from them". Perhaps it has, or perhaps it is just that the game as a televisual spectacle is evolving all the time. Once, fans were concerned to see their team win. At France '98, they still want to see their heroes win, but if they lose, there is always the compensation of being able to show off your bikini line or beer-belly to the hectic rhythm of halftime disco beat, all for the benefit of a worldwide audience. As Keith Cooper, senior spokesman for world soccer's governing body, FIFA, put it: "Without wanting to play down the gravity of the incidents that have happened here involving German and English fans, I do feel you have to maintain a sense of balance. No fans from Asia, Latin America or North America and very few from Africa and Europe have given any trouble."
True, they have been here to have a good time and prove the FIFA logo right - "C'est beau, un monde qui joue."