Deflated Scots left to pick up pieces of failed bid

There was no doubting the influence of Celts on European football on Thursday, it was just that it came in the wrong place. A Welsh flag shone out like a beacon in the Estadio Balaidos, alongside the forest of green and white, in homage to John Hartson, as 5,000 Celtic fans celebrated long into the night.

Hartson's vital away goal had taken the Glasgow club into the fourth round of the Uefa Cup, eclipsing Celta Vigo, at present Spain's third best team who have Barcelona and Real Madrid in their wake in La Liga.

On another part of the continent, however, the flags were at half-mast. In Geneva, the optimism that Scotland and Ireland would be celebrating the award of the 2008 European Championships had evaporated. Unlike Martin O'Neill's side, there was no nerve-shredding drama for this Celtic connection: the Scots-Irish bid was thrashed.

It went from potential contender, alongside the eventual winning alliance of Austria and Switzerland, to rank outsider. The Celtic bid came fifth out of the seven on the first vote, and was amended to fourth for the second ballot.

Jack McConnell, Scotland's First Minister, whose lukewarm backing had forced the Scottish FA to scrap the original intention of hosting the tournament alone and instead seek a partnership with Dublin, later tried to conjure up a football analogy to explain away the disappointment to the Scottish public.

"This is like being 4-0 down at half-time and scoring three goals in the second half, but not quite getting there," he said. It was the kind of blinkered nonsense that would do credit to any manager, yet its accuracy was as limited as its sincerity. McConnell was not quite crying crocodile tears, yet Scotland's Euro 2008 bid was something he had inherited from his predecessor, Henry McLeish, a former Leeds United footballer.

The severity of the beating was what hurt most Scots. The bid was not even among the four recommended to Uefa's executive committee for the final vote. It was ranked along with the Croatia-Bosnia/ Russia partnership.

David Taylor, the chief executive of the SFA, could barely contain his incredulity. "In terms of technical assessment, which means stadia, we had 94 per cent, just one per cent less than Austria-Switzerland. The others were not even in the 90s." So, were the Scots victims of a Uefa stitch-up, or had they simply been listening to the wrong rumours? There now seems little doubt that the whole exercise was a rubber stamp: Austria had been guaranteed atonement after losing out to England for Euro 96 and then in the 2004 vote, while the idea of Switzerland actually staging a ballot in which it was a contender, makes a mockery of its tradition of neutrality.

"We heard during the course of the bidding that it was almost as if it was 'Austria's turn'," admitted Taylor. One Scot who moves within the corridors of power at the other end of Switzerland, in Fifa's Zurich headquarters, was shocked that his country had been treated so shabbily. "I was astounded," said David Will, the Fifa vice-president. "Scotland was not included on the four bids recommended to the committee and never recovered from that."

Uefa insiders explained to the SFA that they did not like three stadiums (Hampden, Parkhead and Ibrox) being in Glasgow, not the uncertain Irish contribution – the Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, could not deliver the stadium he promised – and also pointed to England hosting Euro 96 as too recent for the event to be held in Britain again and Ireland. It would have been more helpful if it had said this a year ago, before £1.5m was run up on preparing the bid.