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Basel

I've taken a bit of a shine to Switzerland coach Kobi Kuhn. He makes me think of a favourite old uncle; welcoming, with a nice line in presents at Christmas and a stoic desire to shield the young ones from bad news.

In the dressing room after his team's deflating , he told his players to forget all about the loss, rather like, I imagine, the way my very own favourite uncle would convince me grades did not matter after I'd received yet another disappointing end of term report.

My seat in the St Jakob-Park Stadium on Saturday was three rows behind the dugouts, which meant I had the perfect vantage point from which to view the behaviour of Kuhn and his Czech counterpart .

Observing them at close quarters as they took turns rising up out of their seats to yell some instruction or other was like watching one of those clocks where one figurine briefly appears from behind a door to be quickly replaced by another.

Both Kuhn and Bruckner are highly respected men in their home countries and both will retire once Euro 2008 finishes.

Yet while Kuhn has a kindly face and the sort of demeanour that suggests he doesn't ever lose his temper, even when his team are denied a blatant penalty as they were against the Czechs, Bruckner has the steely gaze and refined, craggy features that would not look out of place in the Hammer House of Horrors.

There was no handshake between the two men after the game. As Kuhn walked onto the pitch, seemingly miles from anyone, Bruckner embraced his backroom staff.

You had to feel some sympathy for Kuhn. As coach of one of the co-hosts, he has a heavy weight of expectation on his shoulders. More acutely, his .

I felt like bursting forward, past the lackadaisical, mullet-haired steward, onto the pitch and telling Kuhn not to worry, that it will all turn out OK in the end. The only problem with that, apart from the fact that I would have been arrested and, in all probability, sacked from my job, is that I don't think it is true.

Everything is not all right and the Swiss balloon is in grave danger of deflating before it has been properly blown up - and that would be a terrible shame for the tournament.

The Swiss turned out in great colour on Saturday, turning Basel red and white, but I'm not sure that football is in their DNA. They may look the part, but they don't sound it.

Wandering through the city on Friday, I eventually heard some singing and chanting. It turned out to be a group of high-spirited English fans.

I certainly haven't yet experienced the same sense of euphoria that knocked me sideways like a slap in the face from a wet and weighty fish when I was in Germany at the World Cup.

And after the match in Basel, events conspired to leave me even more confused.

The Swiss, whom I am starting to suspect exist within a small emotional bandwidth, seemed extremely philosophical in defeat. Even the players wandering through the mixed zone afterwards seemed remarkably upbeat. Perhaps they just don't believe that football is more important than life or death.

I was mulling this over in a bar when several Czech fans came in and sat at my table.

In between grumbling about the amount of Russians that now visit their hometown, they expressed their abject dismay at their team's performance.

"Not good, not good, not good," one said over and over again, as if to give the point extra gravitas. One of them did not speak any English but talked to me at length in Czech while I did my finest imitation of a nodding dog. When he started showing me photos on his mobile phone of his child playing ice hockey, I finally realised we had veered some way off topic.

Unhappy winners and sanguine losers - Saturday was, to borrow from Arkwright, a funny old day.

Not that Alexander Frei feels like laughing. Sitting so close to the Swiss dugout, I could see the pain on his face as he received treatment on his .

At one point, the 28-year-old captain, who had battled so hard to be fit for the tournament, turned his head and tried to burrow it into the turf.

It was a heart-wrenching scene, sullied by the sight of all and sundry capturing the moment on their digital cameras.

Since arriving in Switzerland I've been told to 'Expect Emotions'. Such a shame that they finally arrived in the form of tears.