The European Championship is a brief tournament and next summer's event will be furious as well as fast. Yesterday's draw introduced the anger early by pitting the World Cup holders, Italy, against the losing finalists, France, and giving them Holland for company. The remaining side in Group C, Romania, must feel fatalistic.

"I have to say the way the seedings are worked out is madness," said the France coach, Raymond Domenech. "Not to have Italy, as the world champions, in the first pot is crazy. I would also have preferred to have played in Austria and not Switzerland, because we would have been hassled less. I am not happy, nothing I wanted has worked out.

"In fact, I don't think we're the happiest four coaches here after the draw and the way it worked out. We would love to have avoided the three other teams, but now we've got it we'll have to deal with it."

Italy coach Roberto Donadoni said: "We didn't have an easy qualification group and we haven't been lucky here either. I had a gut feeling on the way here it would turn out like this."

Former Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier, now France's technical director, expressed similar sentiments. "We'll have to be very good from the first game and it may all come down to the one game against Italy," he said. I think Italy will be eliminated because The Netherlands will be better."

England, under the structure of the draw, would have occupied the slot that is filled by Portugal and might have been encouraged to have had Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Turkey as rivals in Group A. The British prospective is, in fact, an irrelevance since none of its four countries qualified for the finals in Austria and Switzerland. Those who are fit to participate will see the opening phase of the 16-team tournament as being composed of two distinct parts.

Group C is especially intriguing but Group B could be gruelling in another respect. It has overtones of tragic history far beyond the little world of sport. Austria, Croatia, Germany and Poland meet one another there. With the exception of the co-hosts, who are alarmingly weak and may struggle to retain a vestige of pride, the teams will be engaged in fierce competition because of the sheer quality of the players. Croatia are one of the sides who denied England a place.

Croatian coach Slaven Bilic claimed his team was good enough to go a long way. "We proved we could beat any team by what we did at Wembley," he said. "We like pressure. It's the only way you can progress. We are full of confidence and we are going to be well prepared to come here and play good football."

Guus Hiddink's Russia are in the easier half of the draw. They will envisage a route to the quarter-finals as runners-up behind Spain. Nonetheless, tenacious Sweden and the reigning champions Greece will also have their eyes on a similar path.

The game between Switzerland and Turkey will rekindle memories of an ugly incident during qualification for the last World Cup when Turkish players fought with their opponents in the tunnel during the play-off second leg in Istanbul - a spat which saw both nations later punished.

But Switzerland coach Kobi Kuhn said: "There is no problem between Switzerland and Turkey. Too many people have been fixating on things that should have been long forgotten. I think we will see a fair game with no spectator problems."

Poland and Austria are the only two countries taking part for the first time, although Russia competed as the Soviet Union. Matches take place from June 7th to 29th in Geneva, Berne, Basle, Zurich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Klagenfurt and Vienna.