Ten-woman Germany in Euro 2025 semis after stunning shoot-out win over France

BASEL – Goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger is on top of the world after her saves on July 19 helped send Germany past France and into the semi-finals of Women’s Euro 2025.

Berger, a two-time survivor of thyroid cancer, saved Alice Sombath’s penalty to decide the shoot-out 6-5 in Germany’s favour after a gruelling match ended 1-1 after extra time.

The 34-year-old also stopped France’s first penalty from Amel Majri and kept the scores level in the first half of extra time, with an astonishing save to make sure Janina Minge did not knock Germany out with an own goal.

“I feel like I’m not a really emotional person. I’m glad I’m here and I’m glad that I have the team I have. Obviously the time here just makes me proud to be here,” Berger told reporters.

“Whatever happened in 2022 is in the past and I’m looking forward to it now, to the future. For me, now I live my best life and I’m in the semi-final.”

The eight-time Euro winners will next take on world champions Spain in Zurich on July 23.

They maintained their record of having never lost to France in a major summer tournament, after battling back from going a goal and a woman down in the first 15 minutes to win a bruising encounter in Basel.

“I would have loved to have had the game in 90 minutes and done and dusted,” Berger added.

“I did my part of the game. In 120 minutes they (the team) worked incredibly hard and I think all the credit should go to the team, not me.

“Maybe it was the decisive moment in the penalty shoot-out but everyone here should talk about it with him (coach Christian Wuck) now about the performance of the team, because that was amazing and incredible.”

St Jakob-Park was dominated by fierce German support which flocked over the nearby border with Switzerland and roared their team on, even after Kathrin Hendrich was sent off and gave away the penalty from which Grace Geyoro opened the scoring.

Sjoeke Nusken – who also missed a penalty in the second half – levelled the scores 10 minutes later and, after a long battle to hold off France, Berger sent the majority of the crowd wild with her shoot-out stops.

France have now fallen at the quarter-finals in eight of their last 10 Euros, after losing a match in which they had two goals ruled out for offside.

“I don’t think it was down to character, you have to remember that Germany are third in the Fifa rankings. They sat back and it was hard to break them down – they put in a huge effort against us,” said France coach Laurent Bonadei.

“We couldn’t make the difference, we had two goals ruled out for offside... it’s a lack of being clinical in front of goal.”

Looking ahead, Berger did not want to promise that they would beat Spain to make the final.

“We do everything one step at a time – first of all we celebrate, then we focus on Spain. There is a very hard and tough opponent we have to face and everybody really gave their ultimate effort here and we need to regenerate, we have to make sure we recover,” she said.
AFP, REUTERS