FOOTBALL: Weighed down by the fiasco of the final of the last Champions League, France was rejected for hosting of the Women’s Euro in 2025
The host of the Women’s Euro 2025 was awarded to Switzerland on Tuesday at the end of the UEFA executive committee meeting in Lisbon. Preferred to France, a quartet of Nordic nations (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) and Poland, Switzerland succeeds England, host and winner of the European Championship in 2022. Sixteen nations will take part in the competition which will be scheduled for the months of June and July 2025 in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Zurich, Saint-Gall, Sion, Lucerne and Thun, according to a press release from the Swiss Federation.
The Swiss Football Association (ASF) has been chosen to host a major football competition for the second time after the men’s Euro 2008, co-organized with Austria. It has never hosted a European Women’s Championship on its soil, unlike Norway (1987, 1997 with Sweden), Denmark (1991), Finland (2009) and Sweden (2013).
France did not seduce
While the four Nordic countries, where women’s football is very popular, were the favourites, Switzerland has undoubtedly benefited from its central place on the continent. “Our tournament should be a four-week celebration for all of Switzerland and, thanks to our location in the heart of Europe, for the surrounding countries”, noted Marion Daube, director of women’s football at the ASF and responsible for the candidacy project, in the press release.
France, host of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, may have been weighed down by the fiasco of the Champions League final at the Stade de France in May 2022, but also by the crisis at the French Federation, which resulted in the resignation of the President Noël Le Graët and his replacement by the interim Philippe Diallo, and by the psychodrama at Les Bleues with the ousting of coach Corinne Deacon, publicly let go by several executive players.
