Switzerland pulls off dazzling high-wire act as Euro 2025 delivers to the last | Nick Ames | OneFootball

Twelve hours before Euro 2025 reached its crescendo the Uefa executive director of football, Giorgio Marchetti, addressed a hall of delegates in Basel. The morning coffees were still taking hold as officials from clubs, federations and other stakeholders settled down for a forum designed partly to debrief the previous month. There was no mistaking the congratulatory mood and Marchetti was determined to see it last. The tournament would not be “like a butterfly, over in 24 hours”, he said; instead its reverberations would be felt far into a burgeoning sport’s future.

There was certainly little sign of any effects dulling as afterparties swung long into the night following England’s heist against Spain. The overwhelming sense was of euphoria, sprinkled with relief, that host and governing body had pulled off what some viewed as a high‑wire act. Switzerland’s relatively modest football infrastructure, not to mention its muted appreciation of the women’s game, had raised eyebrows but it staged an event that delivered to the last.

“It’s a very strong image of Switzerland that has been shared with the whole world,” the Swiss football association president, Dominique Blanc, said on Monday. “It has exceeded our expectations as organiser and also the expectation of Uefa.”

All parties can reel off a string of convincing figures. If Switzerland needed the money it can bask in 200 million francs (£186m) brought in through tourism by the European Championship. That is a direct consequence of the numbers that make Uefa particularly proud: a record attendance of more than 657,000; all bar two of the 31 games being recorded as sellouts; the number of visiting supporters far exceeding those at previous editions.

Then came the sensory evidence that it remains worth granting host status to grow football in countries that are not autocracies, petrostates or both. Switzerland rose cautiously but, in the end, entirely to the challenge of presenting a spectacle. The country has never experienced scenes such as the fan walk in Berne before their historic quarter-final against Spain, when a sea of red flowed over Nydeggbrücke bridge and snaked up the hill towards Stadion Wankdorf. Those fan marches, replicated by several nations’ fanbases across the month, were evidence of a women’s football supporter culture that has grown in shape and identity here. Uefa wanted to learn more about the sport’s audience, its habits and its mores, at Euro 2025 and has been presented with compelling answers.

Nor has Switzerland experienced many noises like the commotion that erupted in Geneva when the Nati dramatically equalised against Finland. Crucially it learned to embrace and cherish a young, multicultural team with none of the cynicism previously unloaded on some of their male counterparts. Opportunity knocks in the marketable, vastly talented forms of Sydney Schertenleib and Iman Beney.

The country now has a platform to do more than flap its wings. Can it harness that momentum between now and the next Nations League campaign in February? Uefa will hope so as it looks to bolster the suite of credible, high-level contenders for its competitions. England’s win at least gave the lie to any idea that Spain could not be toppled but, among some observers, there was quiet disappointment about the level shown by some big guns.

Neither France nor Germany convinced, while the Netherlands flopped; Sweden had looked the best prepared team to take on La Roja but blew their quarter-final against an England side propelled by its own destiny. It felt instructive when Emma Hayes, a speaker at Uefa’s forum on Sunday, suggested England’s transitions had not been as slick as those at Euro 2022. That proved not to matter and there is a sense the standard of play at the top end did not kick on this year, even if there was evidence of a hugely welcome rise in level lower down.

Quality, though, is not always the most important measure of a tournament. Short-term endorphin kicks engender the buzz, especially among remote viewers, and it did little harm to the competition’s role in hearts and minds that so many of the decisive tussles staggered towards penalty shootouts or dramatic extra‑time resolutions. Those moments, much more than the cruises and cakewalks, cement an event in new supporters’ consciousnesses. Euro 2025 achieved that in greater concentration than any of its past equivalent tournaments.

Uefa must now choose the most appropriate step for a tournament that insiders know needs handling with care even if its president, Aleksander Ceferin, was available for only two fleeting appearances. Switzerland’s success has given a green light to choose a more outwardly ambitious host for Euro 2029 from five candidates. Germany appears the early favourite and would also be large enough to sustain an expanded tournament, an eventuality that has not entirely been extinguished.

The women’s European Championship will inevitably join other showpieces in swelling to 24 teams some day although 2033 is a more likely target.

Breaking even and demonstrating that progress can also be measured in sound business terms is – as the Uefa director of women’s football Nadine Kessler, recently told the Guardian – a more concrete priority. There would be clear risks in overreaching when the present model has suggested a path to viability.

For the audience who will define its future, though, pictures matter more than pound signs. The images that will linger include Ann‑Katrin Berger’s extraordinary save against France, Aitana Bonmatí’s semi‑final flourish and the pandemonium that unfolded when Chloe Kelly battered the final penalty past Cata Coll. Euro 2025 built firmly on existing foundations and, for all the challenges that await, set out Marchetti’s vision for a far more durable beast.

Header image: [Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP]