
Hosts Switzerland avoid Euro 2025 group exit with late equaliser: ‘We never stopped dreaming'
Substitute Xhemaili levelled the scores in the 92nd minute at Stade de Geneve to secure a 1-1 draw and progression to the quarter-finals as Group A runners up, finishing ahead of Finland by virtue of their superior goal difference
Advertisement
A loss on Thursday would have resulted in Finland progressing instead and seen Switzerland become the first host nation to fail to reach the knockout stages at the women's European Championship since England in 2005.
'We Swiss people – we're a small nation, we never stopped dreaming, we never stopped fighting and we showed that we can fight for 95 minutes even if it's tough and hard,' Xhemaili told womenseuro.com.
After losing 2-1 to Norway in their opening group game, Switzerland beat Iceland 2-0 on Sunday to ensure they just needed to avoid defeat against Finland to book a quarter-final place.
However, Pia Sundhage's side were left facing elimination as Finland defender Natalia Kuikka converted a 79th-minute penalty after Viola Calligaris was penalised for a clumsy challenge on Emma Koivisto.
With seven minutes of stoppage time added on, Switzerland pushed for an equaliser. Geraldine Reuteler, scorer of her side's crucial first in Sunday's win over Iceland, turned provider, collecting Ana-Maria Crnogorcevic's pass before her low delivery was turned home by 81st-minute substitute Xhemaili.
'I think I screamed everything that was inside me out,' Reuteler told a post-match press conference. 'I was so, so happy. I just saw in everyone's eyes that we would still score this goal. It was just incredible today, again.'
Finland head coach Marko Saloranta described the manner of the exit as 'such an empty and painful feeling for all the players and staff'.
'I had to breathe for a while at full time,' Saloranta said. 'I'm proud of how committed my players have been, how crazy they've been. Nobody believed in us outside the camp but we knew we could compete.
'We ended a 16-year wait for a finals win against Iceland, played well against Norway and then came so close to getting the result here to progress. We're hurting.'
Advertisement
Switzerland have twice reached the last-16 at the World Cup but this marks the first time they have qualified for the knockout stages of the European Championship.
They will play the winner of Group B — either Spain or Italy — in the quarter-finals on Friday, July 18.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How to watch Manchester United vs West Ham: TV channel and live stream for friendly tonight
The Premier League Summer Series is back this year, with Manchester United and West Ham set to embark on their respective campaigns this evening. The stage is set at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which hosted the Club World Cup final earlier this summer, and there is plenty for the travelling United faithful to look forward to. Bryan Mbeumo is set to debut after completing his £71million move from Brentford last week, and could score the club's first goal of the season after their only other friendly outing of the summer ended in a goalless draw with Leeds. The Hammers will also see some fresh faces after Kyle Walker-Peters joined on a free transfer. Graham Potter's outfit are now without Mohammed Kudus after the Ghanaian joined Tottenham, and all eyes will be on the manager to see whether he can get West Ham firing without the creative forward. There is plenty of room for improvement for the East London outfit this season after they finished 14th in the Premier League last season. Reinvesting the £55m earned from Kudus' sale could prove key in the Hammers' quest to push back into the top half of the table. Kick-off is set for 12.00am on Sunday morning. Here is how you can follow along... How to watch Manchester United vs West Ham TV channel: The Premier League Summer Series will be broadcast live on Sky Sports. Coverage of Man United vs West Ham will begin at 12.00am BST on Sunday, July 27. Live stream: Sky subscribers can follow the action live online via the SkyGo app and website, or via Now TV. Live blog: Follow minute-by-minute updates with Standard Sport's LIVE blog, complete with expert insight and analysis!
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How to watch Luton vs Tottenham: TV channel and live stream for pre-season friendly today
Tottenham's second pre-season outing of the weekend is against Luton this afternoon. Spurs, who beat Reading in Thomas Frank's first game in charge a week ago, have organised an additional friendly against Wycombe that will take place at Hotspur Way this morning. Once that game wraps up, Tottenham's focus will immediately shift to Kenilworth Road and a meeting with Luton who are now a League One side after suffering relegation in successive seasons. The two teams met as recently as March 2024 in the Premier League as a late goal from Heung-min Son handed Spurs all three points. That result ensured the Lilywhites completed the double over the Hatters that season after coming out on top 1-0 in the reverse fixture. Frank has made it clear that he will "play two even, strong teams" across the two games as he seeks to give as many players as many match minutes as possible before heading off on tour to Asia next week. Below is everything you need to know about where to watch Tottenham's second pre-season friendly of the day... How to watch Luton vs Tottenham TV channel: The game will NOT be broadcast live on TV in the UK. Live stream: Subscribers will be able to stream the game live on SPURSPLAY. A 12-month subscription costs £45. Live blog: You can follow all the action with Standard Sport's LIVE blog!


New York Times
32 minutes ago
- New York Times
Capos, ‘soft hooligans' and a lot of noise – the rise of away fans in women's football
Even before Finland's group match against 2025 European Championship hosts Switzerland kicked off, Melissa Platt's voice is almost gone. She's acting as 'capo' for Finland's fans, leading their chants on the walk to the Stade de Geneve and then inside it, and has underestimated how loud it would be. Advertisement 'Switzerland was expecting 10,000-12,000 fans for their fan walk. We were expecting 150 Finnish fans,' Platt, who moved to Finland from the United States almost 20 years ago, says. 'We were thinking, 'How are we going to create some kind of atmosphere? We're going to be totally drowned out'. Somehow that didn't happen.' As the procession made its way to the stadium south of central Geneva, Platt decided to take what she expected to be a short walk to the rear of the assembled group of Finland supporters. 'I just kept walking back and back and back. It felt like I was walking forever with these Finnish fans, and yelling, with my voice kind of hoarse, but going, 'Louder! Suomi!' (the Finnish word for Finland). It was great. People were so responsive and hyped for it.' In the end, she gave up on reaching the back of the crowd. There were just too many people. This summer's tournament has made significant progress in attracting travelling supporters to Switzerland. UEFA, European football's governing body, said before the tournament kicked off that 35 per cent of the match tickets were bought by international customers. The record for the most away fans at a single women's Euros game was broken this month with 17,000 Germany supporters attending their win over Denmark in Basel, a city within walking distance of the Swiss-German border, in the group stage. The tournament-record crowd for a group match not involving the host country — 22,596 watching the Netherlands vs Switzerland at Sheffield United's Bramall Lane in 2022 — has been bettered on six occasions, with the 34,165 at that Germany-Denmark game the largest. It is not only fans of historically successful footballing nations who have travelled. Finland, who have not progressed past the Euros' group stage since 2009, and Wales, making their major tournament debut, each brought thousands of vocal supporters. The Football Association of Finland estimates at least 1,000 Finns attended each of their three group games, while the Football Association of Wales says around 7,000 Welsh fans travelled to Switzerland for their first taste of a major women's competition. Switzerland's central location within Europe and the travel arrangements put in place for Euro 2025 are partly behind this increase. Free return matchday travel to the stadium involved from anywhere in the host nation by public transport is included in the price of match tickets — a welcome concession in an otherwise expensive country. Germany used a similar scheme when it staged the men's version of this tournament last summer. Advertisement The ticket pricing structure, ranging from 25 Swiss francs (£23, $32, €27) for the cheapest group matches to 90 (£84, $114, €96) for the most expensive seats for the final, has helped, too. Twenty-two of 31 matches were sold out before the start of the competition and Germany's semi-final with Spain saw a tournament record set for cumulative attendance: 623,088. The final is a 34,250 sell-out. St Jakob-Park in Basel, the venue for that final, is Switzerland's largest football stadium, but Sunday's fixture cannot come close to breaking the Women's Euros final attendance record set at 90,000-capacity Wembley in London three years earlier, with 87,192 in the crowd that day as England beat Germany. Accessibility is important but, as Swedish fan Estrid Kjellman pointed out, it isn't everything: 'You don't want people to just go because it's easy or free; you want people to actually want to come and want to chant and sing for their team. You need to have passionate engagement.' When Kjellman attended her first major women's tournament, Euro 2017 in the Netherlands, she thought: 'Where is everyone?' 'It was just so silent, there were no Swedish people (at Sweden's games), there were no pre-match gatherings, there was nothing organised at all around the fans, except for the Dutch fans. I wanted to be loud, I wanted to be fun, I wanted to be engaging and interactive.' Kjellman decided to set up a fans' group called Soft Hooligans, so named because at the time their loud cheering was so unusual they were looked at 'like we were crazy, like we were hooligans'. At Zurich's Stadion Letzigrund, for their team's eventual penalty shootout defeat by England in the quarter-finals, those in Sweden's luminous yellow shirts were outnumbered. It did not matter though, as Kjellman and company drowned out their English counterparts over three tense hours of football. Advertisement There was bouncing, drumming, singing, even a call-and-response chant with another group of Swedish fans sitting in another part of the stadium in the second half. Their noise only dipped after the shootout was over — they had remained loud after England, from 2-0 down, scored twice in three minutes late on to force extra time. Even then, they were prepared, producing huge banners in tribute to the head coach, Peter Gerhardsson, whose time in charge of the team would end when their involvement in the tournament did. They read, 'You are the one shining' – a modification of lyrics from Gerhardsson's favourite musical artist, Joakim Thastrom — and 'Thank you so, so, so much Peter'. It was a far cry from the atmosphere Kjellman experienced eight years ago in the Netherlands. Speaking to The Athletic before the quarter-finals, she said the number of away fans at these Euros had been 'next level'. The next big tournament in women's football, the 2027 World Cup, will be out of reach for many European fans as it is being played in Brazil, but should attract supporters from across North and South America. That will be followed by Euro 2029, the host nation for which will be announced in December, and the 2035 World Cup, in the UK — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The question for all three of those tournaments is how they can build on the numbers and the noise seen and heard in Switzerland over these past few weeks. 'It's been really positive to see the atmosphere created,' says Deborah Dilworth, head of women's football at the UK's Football Supporters' Association. 'We have had a dedicated England section here — if I look back to the World Cup (in Australia and New Zealand in 2023), it was disjointed, and so the visibility of England fans and the capacity to make noise was strained. 'This time around, there's at least 2,000 in a block of fans that are all England fans, all singing. The administration has helped the atmosphere.' Dilworth says the organisation of fan walks, pre-match meetups and supporter embassies (which can help travellers with issues such as lost passports or broken phones) are positives, too: 'Fans are being supported as they travel, which is what will make people come back.' Platt emphasises the importance of tournament organisers and national associations working with fans to help create an atmosphere. Advertisement '(Supporters) are going to want to do things like having a capo or a chant leader in the front,' she says. 'The Finnish association facilitated us being able to create the atmosphere there by making sure we knew what kind of certification we needed for our banners, making sure that we could bring in the drums. 'Having this kind of structured support is a critical way of growing the game.' Dilworth wants organisers to consult with fans about what helps them travel, and to consider the specific needs of a women's football audience. In Switzerland this summer, one debate has been over bringing water into stadiums. For some of the tournament's first matches, which took place as a heatwave hit the region, fans were able to take in their own drinks. However, Dilworth feels the rules could have been relaxed further to reflect the needs of crowds which could include menopausal women or families with small children — and that she thinks are also less likely to use those bottles as missiles than their equivalent at a tournament in the men's game. 'I know there's a logistical challenge sometimes, but I do think sometimes (the approach is), 'Well, it's football and it's a stadium', instead of thinking things through for the audience that you're welcoming in,' she says. The question is no longer whether people will turn out to watch international football competitions in the women's game, or travel to another country to do so. It is now what organisers are going to do to a) keep them coming back for future editions, and b) make the atmosphere better still. '(The support) is growing, but there's still a lot that can be done,' Kjellman said. 'A lot will change before the next World Cup and the next Euros,' she smiles. 'And I think it will become even louder.'