Women’s football European Championship-a Swiss summer fairy tale

Tiina Kipari looks tired and happy when she enters the special train of the Swiss Federal Railway last Friday, which was waiting for football fans at the Bern Wankdorf stop. The women’s national team in Switzerland against Spain (0: 2) has just said goodbye in the quarter-finals, the players shot a round of honor with a poster “Merci fans”. In the face of the native Swede painted with a Swiss flag, there is hardly any tribulation. On the contrary. The 53-year-old is convinced that with the almost 30,000 other people in the Wankdorf Stadium, he has attended an awakening experience.

She probably has a special sense of this: her job is to convey to children the value of sport. Kipari has been living with the family in Switzerland for ten years, working as head of youth and sports at the primary school in Wilen in the canton of Schwyz. She believes that football is needed to promote girls in society.

Many have always been interested, but often did not dare to be the only girl with a lot of boys. To do this, these girls would have lacked role models, explains the teacher. Now there was a change: five, six from each class, she said, would like to want to play football recently.

The local football club is involved in Kipari’s school. The Swiss Football Association offers programs for women to hold the appropriate lessons. She finds that wonderful. In Scandinavia, Kipari has already represented the thesis that the Matheformel sits better when the triad is right: running, doing, learning.

But why should it be football? “Because you don’t need as much equipment as skiing or ice hockey. Because the clubs are not as expensive as with tennis, «said the teacher. Including arguments.

Before the quarter-finals, 25,000 people marched through the Bernese old town to the Wankdorf-Stadion-where Helmut Rahn once scored Germany in 1954 to the first World Cup title. Who had expected such a enthusiasm of the Confederates for the “Nati” of women?

“I would never have believed that something like this happens in Switzerland.”

Pia SundhageTrainer of the Swiss national football team

Even the trainer of the Swiss national soccer team and Swedish globetrotter Pia Sundhage made it astonishment: “I never believed that something like this happens in Switzerland,” said the 65-year-old. When she moved to Bern a year and a half ago, she would never have thought such a wave of enthusiasm. Although she trained the Swedish national team during her home European Championship, she also experienced a hype that made the players known. “But that was over ten years ago,” said Sundhage. “We have learned a lot since then. I think the starting point for Switzerland is better than that in Sweden at the time. “

For at least one summer, the level -headed captain of Swiss women, Lia Wälti, is higher in the course than Granit Xhaka, the argumentative leader of the men. Many had thought that such attention could only be created with Alisha Lehmann. The Swiss national player with her almost 17 million followers on Instagram and another twelve million at Tikkok is the world’s most powerful footballer in the world. Your self -staging looks borderline – and sometimes has little to do with sports. But football is the focus of this European Championship.

The 14th edition of the tournament is already a complete success before the kick -off for the final on Sunday on Sunday. The amateur -like, partly provincial ambience, which, for example, was still in Sweden at the 2009 European Championship in Finland and even at the 2013 European Championship. And yet the European Championship 2025 is still a family, sometimes active event. Despite the now highly professional framework for the teams, which now also use the most luxurious hotels.

The whole thing was controlled by the European Football Union (UEFA), which is based in Nyon, a fine area at Lake Geneva. The threads went together at Nadine Kessler. The 2013 European champion and world footballer from 2014 is convinced that only healthy growth helps women’s football. Nevertheless, there was a new record with more than 600,000 visitors and almost without exception sold -out stages that had between 7750 (Sion) and 34 250 places (Basel).

The women’s European Championship formed the counterpoint to what the FIFA World Federation Association, which was also based in Switzerland. Its President Gianni Infantino ruthlessly implemented his expansion desert, and further flows up the competitions of men and women – or invent completely new ones. The absurd-looking club World Cup in the USA, sometimes held at the same time as the EM of women, made Saudi donors possible. The FIFA boss had to do a thing with US President Donald Trump. The next world championship of women, also organized by FIFA, will be played in Brazil in 2027, after which the United States should be on it. 48 teams are planned for 2031.

The Women’s European Championship 2029 remains with 16 participants in Germany, Poland, Poland, Italy, Portugal or Sweden and Denmark. Why do a cover that would not fit? Keßler argues why the competition is inflated when many nations from Europe are not (yet) so far. She doesn’t want to build air locks.

In Switzerland there were fanzones like in Basel on Barfüsserplatz, which seemed exactly suitable. In Zurich, ten large, red soccer goals, so -called “Red Goals”, showed the way. A project by the Hamburg light artist Michael Batz, which was already used at the 2006 World Cup. In the evening, young people gathered at one of these goals on Idaplatz at many games for public viewing. The televisions were densely surrounded to celebrate new heroines. About Géraldine Reuteler. A fine technician who had a huge tattoo on her left thigh. A saying in English that is self-explanatory for the 26-year-old: »The world is much larger than your brain. Stop living only in your head. “

At the age of 13, Reuteler moved out of home to be trained as a footballer in a national performance center – she has been playing at the Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt for seven years, but never as popular as this summer. “Reuteler redeemed an entire nation,” Calvin Stettler shouted from Swiss radio and television (SRF) into the microphone when she scored an important goal. In three group games, she was the “player of the game” who now wants to hire clubs like Olympique Lyon or Paris St. Germain. There she could earn 20,000, 25,000 euros a month – triple as in Germany. The salaries for the best women rise rapidly, but are still far away from the crazy sums of the men.

“The Swiss population was carried away by the tournament.”

Tanja ReinhardtMarketing organization Switzerland Tourismus

Tourism also wants to benefit from the hype about the European Championship, as Tanja Reinhardt explains from the state marketing organization Switzerland Tourism. Among the 600,000 stadium visitors were more foreign guests than ever. Every year there are four million overnight stays from Germany – in the future it could be more. »It is also tidied up with some clichés. I also heard that German guests said: ‘It is not that expensive’. With us, the pizza no longer costs seven euros 50, «says Reinhardt. “And you saw that public transport works. Sometimes it is almost too perfect. ”For them, beam effects have been created externally and inside:» The Swiss population was carried away by the tournament. Football is not the number one sport, especially in winter. ”

But women’s football did not pull people with them. In the »2. Akt Sportsbar «not far from the popular Schanzengraben in Zurich, football broadcasts are offered on several days a week. On nine screens, there is fast food and beer. When Switzerland’s last group game ran and the SRF presenter roared his joy again, the landlord was alone at the counter. He said that his shop was full the days before. When the semi-finals of the club World Cup ran. FC Chelsea and Paris St. Germain played more attractive than Alisha Lehmann, he said succinctly. On July 14th, his meeting point closed for two weeks. In the middle of the women’s European Championship.