By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

We began to suspect that it could be a marriage made in heaven, but it all ended in spectacular divorce.

The Scottish-Irish bid to host the 2008 championship missed the target by miles, just as we all began to be persuaded that it was bang on course.

The failure to reach the last three was nothing short of incredible and underlined that we are nowhere near streetwise enough to navigate the political maze that is the hierarchy of Uefa.

President Lennart Johansson admitted to me in an exclusive BBC interview that he was absolutely shocked that the Scots-Irish bid did not even progress beyond the first round of voting.

He insisted that in the event of him being able to register a vote, he would have backed the Celtic bid.

That the final shakedown involved Switzerland and Austria was hardly a surprise, but the presence of Hungary, who finished second, and indeed only lost out by two votes, was breathtaking.

The fact that warring neighbours Greece and Turkey were included in the photo finish really did prove that it is impossible to read the minds of the gentlemen of Geneva.

The Scots-Irish bid wasn't even at the races and yet, to a man, those on the executive committee of Uefa that I spoke to insisted that they should try again for 2012.

And furthermore, Johansson and chief executive Gerhard Aigner swore that the presence of Ireland and their procrastination over the stadium issue were not factors in the rejection of the Celtic attempt.

Anyone who associates with Scottish football knows well the feeling of glorious failure, but even by the standards of our history, this was a spectacular crash landing.

And yet it has not all been in vain because even by registering a bid, the profile of Scotland in the European football arena has been massaged.

And there was genuine sympathy among the wheelers and dealers of the European football elite in Geneva.

It is of course too early to declare whether they will go for 2012 because David Taylor, who handled himself magnificently throughout the whole operation, is curently like a man suffering with a heavy hangover.

And frankly at this moment, the last thing he needs is another sip of Swiss wine.