Euro 2025 hosts Switzerland suffer own-goal and VAR heartache against Norway | OneFootball

Switzerland were denied a fairytale start to their home Euros as a header from Ada Hegerberg and an own goal gave an unconvincing Norway three points.

Nadine Riesen’s first-half opener had fans spiralling, hope and ecstasy pouring from every corner of the ground, but their profligacy would prove costly as a moment of magic from Hegerberg and then Caroline Graham Hansen to force Norway’s second turned the game on its head.

“In football you make your own luck,” said Gemma Grainger, the Norway manager. “The games are going to be tight in these championships. You want a perfect world where you perform and win but sometimes you perform and you don’t win. We will definitely look back at this game but Switzerland are a top team, playing at home, the opening game, I thought they were fabulous.”

There were doubts over the capabilities of the Nati coming into their home Euros. Ramona Bachmann’s anterior cruciate ligament injury denied the host nation a figurehead, Lia Wälti, who was brilliant in Basel, has had her fitness questioned after a stop-start season for Arsenal and only Finland and Wales sat below the Swiss in the Fifa world rankings of the sides here.

There was no dampened optimism from the sea of red that marched towards the stadium for an hour in the searing heat, ready to spend an evening peeling sweaty backs off plastic seats as the temperature remained at 32C at kick-off.

“We didn’t win the game, there’s such a small difference between being successful and unsuccessful,” said Pia Sundhage, the Switzerland manager. “I’m very disappointed but tomorrow it’s important we look at the performance and take confidence from that.”

The mood was electric inside St Jakob-Park, the home of FC Basel, in Basel and although the 37,500-capacity stadium was no match for the 2022 opener at Old Trafford in scale, it made up for it in volume. “Wäl-ti, Wäl-ti, Wäl- ti” the fans chanted towards their talismanic captain, whose visage adorns Adidas billboards across the city facing off with Germany’s Jule Brand. If a crowd could compensate for the small pool of players available, the league in Switzerland not yet being fully professional and only five of the 23-player squad playing their domestic football on home soil, then it did its best to do so.

The energy from the crowd was matched by the energy on the pitch. The Nati had come to compete, not just host. Expectations around their opponents were cautiously high. Norway possess individual attacking talent that would be the envy of any team and yet they have struggled in tournaments, a team of galácticos that at times look like they don’t know each other. At the World Cup in 2023 they scrapped through the group stage by the skin of their teeth, and they have failed to escape the group in the previous two editions of the European Championship, including suffering a humiliating 8-0 defeat by England in 2022.

If this was their time to make a statement, they didn’t present their case in the first half. Instead, it was the home team that impressed. There was an energy to the Swiss and their wingers in particular had great joy in behind Norway’s wing-backs. Wälti and Géraldine Reuteler both tested the goalkeeper Cecilie Fiskerstrand from distance and their four corners inside 15 minutes were a reflection of their fighting spirit.

Reuteler stung the bar, and the opening goal arrived to reward the patient and encouraging crowd four minutes later. Riesen, given an acre of space on the left, swung herself towards the box before sending in a low cross for Smilla Vallotto. She failed to control the ball or get a shot away but Riesen was on hand to collect, creeping it past Fiskerstrand and in.

The Swiss began the second half as they had the first, but Norway pulled themselves back into the match out of nowhere nine minutes after the restart, Hegerberg powering in a header from close range after the Swiss goalkeeper Livia Peng had flapped at a rare Norway corner. It was a flattering scoreline for the pre-match favourites and they punished the hosts for not capitalising on their dominance four minutes later, a quiet Graham Hansen bursting to life and escaping 18-year-old Iman Beney on the left before hooking the ball into the middle toward Hegerberg. Julia Stierli got in ahead of the Champions League record goalscorer but deflected the ball into her own net. For the first time the Norwegian fans could be heard over the Swiss, having previously been drowned out and camouflaged, red shirts among red shirts.

It was almost disaster for the hosts in the 67th minute when Reuteler handled from a corner and the referee pointed to the spot, but Hegerberg put her penalty wide.

After that reprieve, Riesen went down under pressure from Mathilde Harviken at the other end, contact looked minimal, but the video assistant referee overturned the initial penalty decision for a marginal offside in the buildup.

Frustrated by Norwegian time wasting – “I don’t want to comment on that,” said Sundhage, when asked about her remarks on TV on the matter – Switzerland fought to the end but they could not find the final ball that would have given them a point. Defeat will hurt, but this was a performance full of promise, one that will act as a warning to Finland and Iceland of what is to come but that also took the fans watching on a journey full of passion that will likely reap rewards.

Header image: [Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters]