When you travel to foreign country, you don’t alway expect to be on the inside cover of the city’s newspaper within a day of arriving. However it wasn’t a total surprise when my host, Jessica, as editor of Zürich’s “Tagblatt”, decided to write a piece on her role as host during a major tournament and mine as tourist and volunteer. We get on well and just laughed at what is by all accounts, a pretty unusual situation. Not only to allow a stranger into your home for two weeks, but then committing yourself to an article detailing our experiences.

Arriving at the Letzigrund Stadion, I found my way to the accreditation office to be greeted with a quickfire-round training session and a kitbag of ridiculous proportions. I travel light and yet I’m now in posession of every piece of clothing Adidas has to offer. Each item is lightning blue and is reminiscent of the Scousers from Harry Enfield and Chums.

None of that mattered when I got down to work which consists of dealing with all the press, broadcasters & all the other people who go into making a tournament work. Every person who works in the stadium needs their accreditation and it’s my job to check their credentials, take their photo and print the passes. Working from 2-10pm, at times there was a queue of people snaking round for almost two hours. And it isn’t even matchday.

But then again - every TV personality who wants to work in the stadium must come through our little office, and there might just be one or two interesting people to meet yet…