The photo below is, so far, the only one I've managed to find on the web today but it will have to suffice. You can just make out my bald head next to Uefa's Unite Against Racism flag behind the turkish team. It was great that after working in the interesting, but not so exciting recently Accreditation centre, to have the opportunity to actually operate inside the stadium for once. I was asked to assist 7 others in holding on the pitch the two flags, standing right behind the Turkish team - enabling me to see rather too closely the number of Tattos on Colin Kazim Richards arms!

Like other games held at St Jakob Stadium the ground was full of "extras" watching the game from the concourse - many of whom seemed to know far more about football than the corporates and VIPs in the seats. There was a great atmosphere, particularly from the Turks, throughout the game. The Turks had 2 or 3 individuals whose job it was to stir the fans into a frenzy and they got very worked up when some fans didn't join in! I heard that there were problems with the TV coverage last night and I'm sure there was little coverage of the lone protesting fan in the second half.

After the game I was dragged into Basel by many of the other German volunteers intent on celebrating the result and I finally got home at 4.00am!

One final comment on the whole Uefa, "Unite Against Racism", campaign. It would be good if they could actually hand out much stiffer sanctions against clubs or national teams (or their fans) that exhibit racist behaviour and attitudes. Fines like this don't work and the sooner FIFA and UEFA deal with it more effectively the better.

It only seems like yesterday that I turned up for work at the Volunteer centre, here at St Jakob Arena, and now it's the final match day. Tonight Germany take on Turkey and it's expected to get lively around town, if not anything like Saturday. Basel is expecting around 100,000 fans for the game though yesterday's work at the Accreditation centre didn't exactly give the impression of much happening today - it was too damned quiet.

I mentioned my lovely friends, ticket touts, last week and L'Equipe reports that 300 Black Market tickets have been seized by Austrian Police. It does seem a rather small drop in the ocean but any action has to be good. The paper also reported that one Russian fan, unfortunately, lost his life, falling from a car whilst celebrating the quart final win on Saturday.

I'm only a visitor to this country but I was truly hoping that they would manage to survive, at least, until the quarter finals. It would certainly have kept the atmosphere in, and around, the major cities at a good level. However, it wasn't to be and the Swiss press have been writing plenty of words as to why they didn't make it. Le Matin reports that the Swiss coach has no regrets. 24 Heures says "it's already over" after 5 years of planning it's been just 5 days lasting!

Unfortunately there was some trouble afterwards, 20 minuten reports that there were 85 arrests as frustrated Swiss Nati fans took out their disappointment on Turkish fans.

Before the match I had been working at the Accreditation Centre but it was very quiet, the only happenings of note being the odd media person appearing outside (see below) or eh arrival of the Swiss fans with very large Cow Bells. You may also have seen the thunderstorm that hit the game about 20 minutes in and I was lucky enough to get drenched by this when walking to the tram stop.