Just about a month after the end of Euro 2008 and we discover today that UEFA managed to make a cool €250M from the whole affair. This will justify (in their eyes anyway) the complete bastardisation of the tournament, like so many others (as we'll see in Bejing soon), by the corporate sponsors. If selling out to Carlsberg only gets you that amount I would say it's not really worth it and we can all have drunk some decent beer. It's also interesting that they claim to betrying everything to deal with the black market but yet refuse to see the evidence that many of these tickets get there via sponsors & football associations.

Just finalising plans for the trip to Stuttgart tomorrow and I feel that the game may be a tad tougher than the U16 XI Arsenal played yesterday. I'm hoping Jens Lehmann will be there to greet us and to allow us to say farewell once more. No idea how many Arsenal fans will be there as it's a long way for a friendly but there are many who "never miss a game", so we'll see.

Most of the rumours running in L'Equipe seem , much like the English press, to be concerned with how Tottenham are going to spend the money gathered from the sale of Keane to Liverpool. The paper also reports that the FFF are not going to allow the appeal of PSG against their removal from the League Cup.

Here in Switzerland there is some reporting of Arsenal's possible interest in Gökhan Inler though it all seems rather tenuous with supposed interest from a host of other clubs too. I also noticed a photo of a sending off in the Young Boys game and saw that the ref was female, still a remarkably unusual occurrence these days. It turns out that she also officiated the first leg UEFA Cup game with Manchester City, so now you know who Nicole Petignat is!

The truly great Kenny Everett and his DIY Bee Gees kit..... (enjoy the clip - see below). Yes, today,  a package arrived from UEFA - it was a thank you certificate and medal but medallion is the word to this huge gold coloured memento from Euro 2008. All I need now is the hair, even hairier chest and that voice - no idea where you get the kit from though!

Anyway back to the football front and it's good to see that finally the Hleb situation has been decided (though words in newspapers don't always signal the actual final point in a transfer). Can't say it bothers me one way or the other these things - players wants to go, makes a noise, agent stirs it up and club get a decent fee - move on. L'Equipe talks about various English transfer rumours here, including various Liverpool playersgoing to Stoke.

20 Minuten reports on Basel after Euro 2008 has gone. it seems that expectation swere high but businesses generally lost out, especially the restaurants (most losing 15-30% revenue, some 50%).  The paper also has an interesting (not football related) story of the American swimmer who will be going to the Olympic Games and has appeared in Playboy, just thought you might like the images!

Big "Chapeau" to Mark Cavendish for his storming stage win in the Tour de France - at one point it looked a little unsure as the final breakaway rider was caught within metres of the finish. His speed over the final 200m was truly astonishing.

Yep - just back from the Dentist and am sitting down trying to ignore the pain whilst watching the Tour. Dentists obviously have the same enjoyment of giving pain as journalists do with making bollocks up every day. Yesterday it was more Hleb and Adebayor rubbish - I refer you to the right honourable Arseblogger for a sane viewpoint.

There was also mention, yesterday, of the sad and inevitable demise of Ooh Aah Ray Parlour. One of my Season Ticket mates at Arsenal was his biggest fan and I believe he is now holding a week's mourning in honour of the "Romford Pele". Most people remember him for this goal against Chelsea but he was the symbol of the hard worker who can play with the greatly talented.

Well it's all gone rather quiet now, this seems to be the calm after the Euro2008 storm that precedes the pre-season silly transfer season storm - or something like that. As an Arsenal fan the Adebayor story rolls on & on, but unlike a rolling stone this one is gathering moss, crap and all sorts of other indescribable filth. Arseblog sums it all up in his inimitable way. He's right too in that there is very little other news unless, like me, you're looking forward to Le Tour starting this weekend! In fact, I think I'll go for a little bike ride in a moment.

Firsly though, here's the news from around these parts. L'Equipe, of course, has now gone into full Tour de France mode and so you have to dig into the paper a few more pages. That's why the internet makes things so much easier. Somehow, and to everyone else's incredulity, Raymond Domenech has kept his job. The FFF seem to be compteting with the FA on how to make extraordinary decisions that seem to make no sense at all. I know people argue about loyalty to managers but in International Football there are distinct cycles of tournaments & qualification. If someone underperforms then you can make a change and surely with the squad available to him, Domenech performed miserably, painfully badly....and here is L'Equipe's summary of the day's news.

Oh and here's one good reason why it's a good thing that Euro 2008 is over... no more Trix & Flix

Take care...

There's a BBC programme called "Click", it's a weekly tech show and only lasts around 20 minutes but can be interesting some weeks. Last week's show introduced a great little website animoto.com which allows you to create short 30 second long videos from photographs. Unfortunately, I can't seem to embed the javascript info to enable the video to be seen here directly, so here's a link to the video on YouTube.

(N.B. update - Here's the video embedded!)

Hope you liked it. Anyway , news from around these parts is quiet - you just don't get the millions of rumours (though L'Equipe likes to summarise them) that the English press seem to thrive on. L'Equipe reports on the ending of the saga of the transfer of Ben Arfa from Lyon to Marseilles. Whether this will actually result in official confirmation of the Nasri deal to Arsenal is still unclear.

Mind you 20 Minuten keeps on putting up little montages of images from Euro 2008, here's another good one, including this great and completely mandatory cow photo from Switzerland.

They also report the fact that, as of Monday, ex-World footballer of the year, Ronaldo, is now unemployed.

Apparently after really enjoyable experiences you have to face the fact that there is "come back down to Earth" moment when you have to face reality again. So after 5 weeks of the volunteer work at Euro 2008 today was the day when I felt this rather depressing chasm hit me. Nope it's not all gloom and doom but it's just not as fun as it was last week, or the week before, or the week before that - oh god  it really is true!!

Sorry, you haven't arrived at this page intending to hear my whining so here's some news from the centre of Europe reagrding major footie stories.

So 20Minuten says, "Schweinsteiger to England?" and I say, "wibble, wibble" as it probably has as much sense. You see this internet thing seems to ensure that any story in one country is regurgitated in most other countries over the next few days. However, without these snippets I suppose all the blogs in the world would fall over through lack of information - maybe that's not such a bad idea. If anyone has any real idea of how you stop continual rumour mongering by Agents, Players & Journalists, I'd love to hear.

On a more enjoyable front, 20 Minuten also shows some of the strangest fans from Euro 2008 in this set of pictures. More like these....

FC Basel now know their potential Champions League Qualification Opponents, they will play either Murata (San Marino) or IFK Göteborg. You would expect them to play Göteborg and the games will take place on 29/30 July & 5/6 August.

And so, after 31 games and 3 intensive weeks, Euro 2008 has ended with just about the right result. Most of the German quotations after the game certainly give the impression of good losers, saying the Spanish deserved to win. Jens, of course, was able to throw a slightly different slant to it!

Watching the game in the busy (though not quite up to Dutch busy standards) Munsterplatz Fan Zone in Basel was good fun. It seems the majority of people were German though Spain were not without their supporters. I think that, overall, the Swiss have hosted and excellent Euro 2008 and

there are some excellent photos from the tournament here on 20minuten's site - Oh I'm sorry it seems to focus on the best looking fans from each country! Basel also says farewell with people being allowed to buy souvenirs from the tournament. However, the company that organised the Fan Camp at Pratteln looks certain to go bankrupt due to the lack of visitors. It wasn't the facilities but just lack of numbers. They probably needed England to qualify!!!

Interestingly, after a very peaceful Euro 2008, 63 FC Basel fans have been temporarily arrested at Zurich train station following a friendly game with Wil. In other Swiss news, Hakan Yakin is set to leave his club, Young Boys of Bern due to a clause in his contract allowing him to leave.

So as Basel bids farewell...

Bis Bald

There's not going to be much today as I'm about to rush out to spend the day by the lake at Thun. I've only one more day of free travel on the Swiss railways so I'm going to make the most of it (thanks UEFA).

I've seen that Arsene Wenger is predicting the end of transfer fees and, to be honest, I've thought this for a while. Two reasons - firstly, the power of players now means that they can pretty much move when they (or their agent) decides they want to; secondly, it's a logical extension of much of what bodies like the EU already require. As far as the EU is concerned individuals have th eright to free movement and, one day, sport (football, in particular) will be challenged.

L'Equipe is suggesting that Germany may play with Frings and Borowski independently of the possible  Ballack injury situation.

Not sure how busy it will be in town tonight for watching the Final in the Munsterplatz fan zone but there are a fair number of Spaniards around plus there is, of course, the closeness of the German border. Could be fun. I want Spain to win but let's look forward to a good game, first of all.

Bis Morgen

I'm just about recovering from the Basel Volunteers' Abschluss Party last night. I really can't remember the last time I strolled home from a night out with the dawn chorus and the sun already up! It's amazing how many catch a train at 5.30 in the morning too!

As a result I thought I would pay tribute to the wonderful Host Nation, Switzerland. Austria may well have been decent hosts but not living there I'll leave their analysis to someone who does. One of the BBC online reporters, Paul Fletcher, has expressed his love of the country in his blog as he moves on to Vienna. He, of course, makes mention of the wonderful Swiss railway, how well the Swiss supported the other nations (the Dutch, in particular) and the general politeness to visitors. However, you do hear the mobile phone music and I must have missed the bottles of champagne allegedly drunk by the volunteers. Certainly if you regard the whole event as a party, the Swiss were perfect, making sure the guests held centre stage and ensuring every need was met. I certainly met many people in the Accreditation centre who didn't realise their pass gave them free travel on all forms of public transport during the tournament.

Just a couple of news snippets from France/Switzerland. Clarence Seedorf expresses a desire to play in England and that he had the possibility of playing for Man Utd or Arsenal in 1996 but went to Real Madrid. There's also Michel Platini's thoughts on Euro 2012, the World Cup in 2018, increasing the teams in the European Championships and the size of stadia.

So last night was the penultimate opportunity to watch a game in one of the three Basel Fan zones. A group of us had intended to watch the Spain v Russia game in one of Basel's more famous and interesting Bars, the Brauerei Fischerstube, home of Ueli Beer. Unfortunately, the small beer garden (with not the biggest TV it has to be said) was unable to accommodate 8 of us. Therefore, it was off to the Riviera by the Rhine for the first half - strangely I saw the first game between Spain and Russia

Meanwhile, in the local paper, the after effects of hosting the tournament has left hundreds of tonnes of rubbish in the 4 Swiss cities. There was also a story (with no online link I'm afraid) to the lives of the England stars(!) and their holiday in Ibiza whilst Euro2008 was taking place!

Just thought I would post this wonderful poster that is apparently showing itself around Bergamo. Here Atlanta fans really don't want to see the return of Vieri, and having seen his appaearances for Fiorentina against Rangers I can't really blame them.

Oh and one final story (though really no surprise) - despite his own confidence Domenech doesn't seem to have the confidence of the French fans - most want him to leave though not a huge majority, which I find odd.