To lose one tournament co-host seems unfortunate, but to lose two? Well, it seems it probably wouldn’t matter at all.

Switzerland have already bowed out and Austria are only just clinging on after a stoppage time penalty equaliser against Poland on Thursday. But the Euro 2008 organisers are insisting that no hosts equals no problem.

As soon as the Swiss made their early exit, Switzerland’s sports minister, national team coach Koebi Kuhn and UEFA spokesman William Gaillard were quick to weigh in with assurances that the party would continue even if Austria follow Switzerland’s disappointing example.

Some may have been surprised to hear that the party had even begun. A mixed bag of weather, including the deluge that nearly drowned those of us ‘fortunate’ enough to have front row seats for the Switzerland v Turkey game, and the two local teams’ early results had already put a sometimes literal dampener on the first few days.

And while the tournament’s organisers clearly have an interest in saying everything is fine, some local businesses seem less convinced. Fanzones away from Switzerland’s main host cities, catering specifically to local supporters, have already reported some disappointing attendance figures, citing weather and the Swiss results as the main factor. Even some of the host city fan zones have reportedly been laying off some of their temporary workers due to lower than expected turnover.

In cities where visiting fans have arrived en masse there is certainly no lack of atmosphere. My own home city, the Swiss capital Berne, has been joyfully swamped by a fantastic orange-wigged army of Dutch supporters. The nearest thing we usually get to that is the city’s annual early morning festival in celebration of the onion - but that probably belongs in another blog….

But the point is that surely local interest is a must in any of the cities not blessed (if that’s the right word?) by hordes of drunken Dutch fans. UEFA might be reckoning on a cumulative television audience of something like eight zillion people, but for the fanzone concept to remain a success, the fans who actually bother to visit the tournament even without tickets will want to know that there’s enough local atmosphere to make it worth their considerable efforts. So do you think Switzerland can pick themselves up from the early exit that few of the fans here expected, even if the rest of Europe did?

Personally, I think if the football stays as entertaining as it has been so far, and the weather continues to improve, the Swiss will be able to prove that they are not as allergic to partying as national stereotype might suggest.

Ironically, though, the biggest threat to the mood in Switzerland could be if their Austrian neighbours do manage somehow to beat Germany and end up with the unexpected bragging rights over the supposedly superior Swiss. Maybe losing two co-hosts isn’t the worst scenario after all…

PHOTO: Switzerland fans react after defeat to Turkey at St Jakob Park in Basel, June 11, 2008. REUTERS/Jerry Lampen

Bizarre as it sounds, UEFA announced last week it was publishing a dictionary.

Teaming up with German reference book publishers Langenscheidt, European soccer’s governing body has produced a dictionary with around 2,000 “official” football terms, handily translated into English, French and German.

You can’t help but imagine some wonderful uses for this important academic work.

Today’s jet-set millionaire coaches will surely grab a copy as they seek to make their multi-national squads understand the latest training ground routine. England coach Fabio Capello and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich will meanwhile be delighted to know that Italian and Russian editions are planned should the first edition prove a success.

Cynicism aside, however, a quick flick through the pages suggests the dictionary might not be such a daft idea. UEFA acknowledge the book is aimed primarily at the sport’s administrators with entries covering areas such as security and stadium terminology, descriptions of sporting equipment, medical terms and phrases commonly used in sports management.

But there is plenty of material that regular fans might want to take a look at. UEFA’s head of languages suggested to me that long-suffering wives of football fans might want to sneakily purchase a copy if they want to impress their husbands during Euro 2008. I reckon some of the entries might justify those husbands taking a furtive look themselves though, particularly those armchair experts who like to claim a greater knowledge of the sport’s intricacies than they truly possess.

There are official answers for those who don’t want to admit that they still don’t understand the new offside rule, or when a free kick should be direct or indirect. Some concise definitions of tactical formations are also useful for fans who might know what a 4-2-3-1 looks like but not when it should be used.

According to the dictionary, 4-2-3-1 is a “relatively defensive formation using a back four, two holding midfielders to screen the defence but also to initiate attacks, three attacking midfielders and one forward”. A 5-3-2 on the other hand is a “defensive system of play… which is heavily reliant on two wing backs occasionally providing width for the team when attacking.”

Overall I would say it is not a bad addition to a football fan’s bookshelf, although UEFA seems to be scraping the barrel for material at times.

If a second edition is ever published UEFA might want to ask if we really need definitions for ‘kicking with the outside of the foot’ (which amazingly means “striking the ball with the edge of the foot”) or ‘replacement of a defective ball’ (”exchange of a ball that bursts or is no longer suitable for play during the course of the match”).

Mark Ledsom, Berne

PHOTO: A Euro 2008 assistant referee attends a workshop near Zurich in preparation for the upcoming tournament, April 17 REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

Flying elbows, mass punch-ups, mouthy players, shirt-tuggers and divers will be the main focus for referees when Euro 2008 kicks off in June.

UEFA handed a six-point list of instructions on Thursday to the 12 referees officiating at the tournament in Switzerland and Austria.

Referees will crack down on players who hold or push opponents during free kicks or corners. Mass confrontations between players will be dealt with by issuing a yellow card to at least one player from each team. When it comes to dissent, officials have been told they can accept “a spontaneous expression of frustration from players” but anything more than that will warrant a sanction.

UEFA will also use video evidence to punish divers and cheats who succeed in fooling the referee at Euro 2008, having trialled the idea in the Champions League.

The emphasis on shirt-tugging and the use of elbows also follows a crackdown in the Champions League, so UEFA argues the players have been warned.

At Thursday’s get-together in Zurich the match officials said they were ready to strictly apply the guidelines. Asked if he was prepared to award a penalty for a shirt tug in the first five minutes of the tournament’s opening match, one referee said he would be quite happy to award five penalties if necessary.

Is UEFA right in calling for greater respect for and stricter adherence to the rules or will a flurry of red cards and penalties ruin the tournament? Would you rather see a crackdown in other areas such as time-wasting?

Fans of sporting clichés may well have to find a new term for the “group of death“ by the time the draw for Euro 2008 has been made, a week on Sunday in Lucerne. Group of mayhem, anyone?

If Germany and the Netherlands seemed far from eager to clinch a place as top seeds when they played their final matches on Wednesday it’s easy to understand why.

Tournament co-hosts Switzerland and Austria and surprise defending champions Greece already had places as number one seeds, meaning the fourth team at the top table (the Dutch as it turns out) could face opponents like Italy (from pot 2), Germany (in pot 3) and/or France (in pot four) in the group phase of the competition.

Overall, the situation looks like this:

Pot 1: Switzerland (hosts), Austria (hosts), Greece (holders), Netherlands

Pot 2: Croatia, Italy, Czech Republic, Sweden

Pot 3: Romania, Germany, Portugal, Spain

Pot 4: Poland, France, Turkey, Russia

If you’re wondering why France, the beaten World Cup finalists, are down in the fourth pot, it’s due to UEFA’s decision to base the seedings solely on qualifying campaigns for the last World Cup and Euro 2008. FIFA’s rankings, by contrast, work on a rolling four-year basis and include both friendly and competitive matches (with greater weighting given to the latter).

A UEFA official I spoke to earlier this week suggested there was something egalitarian or even romantic about the prospect of the bigger teams meeting one another in the group phase. If the big teams get drawn together, it gives the smaller teams a better chance and ‘evens up the playing field’.

Maybe so, but do UEFA really want to have not just the chance but the certain guarantee that two top teams will crash out before the quarter-finals simply because they have been drawn against two other big sides?

If they are truly not bothered about the effect this would have (both in sporting and commercial terms) then why don’t UEFA simply abandon the idea of having seeded teams and hold a completely random draw? Come to think of it, when you look at the pots for Euro 2008 it almost seems like they have.

Mark Ledsom reports on sport for Reuters from Switzerland and Austria

FILE PHOTO: The European Championship trophy on display at the draw for Euro 2000.