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Euro 2025: Girelli's two goals lift Italy over Hegerberg's Norway into semifinals

Euro 2025: Girelli's two goals lift Italy over Hegerberg's Norway into semifinals

Yahoo16-07-2025
GENEVA (AP) — On a night of goals and drama for two veteran star strikers, Cristiani Girelli got the better of Ada Hegerberg to send Italy into the semifinals of the Women's European Championship on Wednesday.
Girelli's 90th-minute header, her second goal of the game, sealed a 2-1 win over Norway, whose captain Hegerberg had tied the game after missing a penalty.
Italy will return to Geneva next Tuesday to face either Sweden or England for its first Women's Euros semifinal since 1997.
The 35-year-old Girelli had seized the lead for Italy in the 50th by deftly guiding in a shot fired across the Norway goal by Sofia Cantore.
Hegerberg leveled the score in the 66th with her first scoring chance just six minutes after missing a penalty kick for the second time at Euro 2025.
Hegerberg ran clear to a long pass and poked a shot past onrushing goalkeeper Laura Giuliani. The slow-rolling ball just beat the Italian defenders in a race to the goal line.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
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Capos, ‘soft hooligans' and a lot of noise – the rise of away fans in women's football
Capos, ‘soft hooligans' and a lot of noise – the rise of away fans in women's football

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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. '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 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. 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 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 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. 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. '(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.' This article originally appeared in The Athletic. England, Wales, Finland, Sweden, International Football, Women's Soccer, Culture, Women's Euros, Women's World Cup 2025 The Athletic Media Company

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