Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 10 June 2008 / Leave a comment

Jonathan Wilson has gone all Big Brother on us today. No, we're not talking awful reality television on Channel 4; we're talking George Orwell's dark vision of misinformation and manipulation. Step forward UEFA's administration.

"And so," boomed the stadium announcer, "after 90 vibrating minutes the final score is: France 0 Romania 0." Now I quite admired the way Romania frustrated France, held possession, and killed the game - I recognise I'm probably in a minority - but even I couldn't have described the game as "vibrating" (or "pulsating" or whatever word they actually meant to use). To describe that as "vibrating" was about as accurate as describing the grass as red. Welcome to the wacky world of UEFA, where the sun always shines, fans are always colourful, games are always thrilling and, presumably, grain yields have seen another 20 per cent rise in line with the five-year plan.

Everything is sweet and fluffy, and nasty things never happen. You may recall other news outlets reporting that there had been 157 arrests in Klagenfurt on Sunday night after Germany's 2-0 win over Poland. Not in the marshmallow-land of UEFA, though: there is no reference to the trouble at all on their website, but Gerard Houllier does believe this is technically the best tournament in the world, and Hyundai urges fans to "support" their team - and possibly win a prize - by logging in to a virtual stadium and "sending a cheer". Nice idea: shame that in UEFA's world everything is virtual.

At half-time in the France-Romania game, there was even an attempt to impose a game of "Simon Says" on the crowd. Thankfully they resisted, but they had still succumbed to the lure of the Mexican wave after six minutes. Why people feel the need to do this is beyond me. If they wanted to pay 50 quid to sit down and stand up at someone else's bidding, they may as well buy a Saver Return from London to Manchester and park themselves in the aisle. Are crowds incapable of simply watching football for what it is?

This is the infantilisation of football's culture, and it is deeply depressing, a Huxleyan nightmare. The moronic games are merely annoying, but if the imposition of a childish blindness allows UEFA to wriggle out of taking responsibility for the tournament's failings, it is a very bad thing indeed.

This is the approach of the ostrich. Pretend there's nothing bad out there, and maybe it will go away. And the truth is that there has been plenty that is bad about this tournament. After a trip to Geneva on the opening day, I suggested that Switzerland was struggling to cope; yesterday in Zurich it was palpably obvious - Euro 2008 is too big for its hosts. In the Hauptbahnhof is a giant inflatable, representing a player from each of the 16 competing nations, arms linked around each other's shoulders as though in a pre-match huddle. They are bent in at the top, stooping to fit uncomfortably under the roof - as a metaphor for the tournament it could hardly be bettered.

Yesterday, the walking route from the station in Zurich to the stadium mysteriously petered out in the middle of the red-light district. Once the ground was reached, there were hundreds of turquoise-shirted volunteers around. It looked like a vast David Icke convention, and it made about as much sense as one. It took 40 minutes from me arriving at the ground to finding the way in: nobody knew where the media entrance was, nobody was able to find out, and everybody was quite certain that they couldn't let me through. Once I did get in, it was the usual story: too many journalists for too few desks, absurdly limited press-conference and mixed-zone access and appalling and overpriced food. In Ghana, at the African Nations earlier this year, cynical Europeans moaned about African values and wondered just how dreadful the World Cup in South Africa might be. The infrastructure may be better in Switzerland, but the basic chaos is just the same.

In the greater scheme of things, of course, it doesn't much matter that a load of journalists get sent on circuits of the ground (although it's worth pointing out that this is a job not a jolly). But if the media is getting ripped off for poor food amid inadequate facilities, you can be sure fans are as well.

And, more seriously, if volunteers can't answer a simple question like "Where's the media entrance?", what would happen if there were a genuine emergency? It's not their fault, of course; they are after all volunteers, and we should be grateful that anybody can be bothered to take on duties for no pay, but they should be better informed. This is a failure of management and organisation.

Not that the UEFA mill that churns out the fluffy propaganda will ever accept as much. All hail the candy-floss utopia.