It's Basel faulty as Steve McClaren and money-hungry UEFA leave numerous English football writers out in the cold for the quarter-finals - not me, but I do feel for the rest of them

It's probably just as well that Steve McClaren is no longer out here working for the BBC because the boys are starting to get a bit miffed.

Yesterday was the day when we discovered if we had tickets to the first two quarter-finals and the news that was emerging in Basel was not terribly encouraging.

The majority of English football writers, and I'm almost embarrassed to say I was among the more fortunate minority, have been rejected.

Steve me old chum, I'd get back on to FC Twente and see if that job's still available in Holland because Blackburn might not be nearly far enough away.

Not that England's absence from Euro 2008 should lead to a shortage of desks for English national newspapers at a major international football tournament.  

This, McClaren will probably be relieved to hear, is entirely the fault of UEFA and their decision to hold the European Championships in two countries with ludicrously inadequate stadia.

For the newspapers who now have no access to a match being contested by the new Chelsea manager, it's actually scandalous.

UEFA, and indeed the two host nations, have allowed members of the foreign media to book hotels for 26 nights at extortionate prices.

Just as they have allowed us to pay crazy money for flights (Vienna-Basel return for the semi-final is £800), meals, drinks and taxi fares. Even, as previously mentioned in this blog, laundry.

They've taken the money but at no point, either over the past seven months or the last few weeks, issued a warning that space in the press boxes could be limited.

Too small: Ahead of the quarter-finals workers prepare the grassless pitch of the St Jakob stadium in Basel which has a capacity of just 33,200

Yesterday, and I don't seriously expect any sympathy from football fans or indeed readers, this newspaper had to pay up front for a hotel room in Basel for that first semi-final next Wednesday.

At £220 it was not what you would call cheap.

Especially when it's a bog standard business hotel. But the hotel has nevertheless been booked through the official Euro 2008 accommodation agency and the money has been paid, even though I have no idea if I'll actually have a seat in the stadium.

Tonight, in Basel, there could be an almighty row between members of the media and the UEFA officials ultimately responsible for this mess. And do you know what?

They won't even be able to say it won't happen again, because four years from now I suspect we'll be experiencing much the same difficulties in Poland and Ukraine.

On a lighter note, and with reference to the aforementioned cost of laundry, I've been offered one or two solutions to the problem of paying £3 to get a pair of pants washed here in Zurich.

"You could always go commando," one young woman suggested.

Now there's an appalling thought.