Sjoeke Nusken’s goal and penalty redemption helped Germany to an incredible shootout victory over Oriane Jean-Francois and Sandy Baltimore’s France at the 2025 UEFA Women’s European Championship, despite being a player and a goal down after 15 minutes.
The two teams met for the last of the quarter-final ties in front of 34,128 passionate supporters, with Basel just a short trip across the border from both countries.
Baltimore had to be content with a place among the substitutes, but Jean-Francois started at the heart of France’s midfield, where she was directly up against her Chelsea team-mate Nusken, who was in an advanced midfield role for Germany.
It initially looked like any drama might be short-lived, as just 13 minutes in Germany were reduced to 10 players when Kathrin Hendrich was sent off for pulling Griedge Mbock back by her hair.
When Grace Geyoro slotted in the resulting penalty, it looked like it could all be over. However, as has been proven so many times before, when it comes to knockout football at an international tournament, you can never rule out the Germans.
They refused to be beaten and in the end were behind for only 10 minutes, before Nusken met Klara Buhl’s corner to head them level.
What came next was predictable, as Germany went into survival mode and dropped deep to close down the space and cancel out France’s numerical advantage. They did so brilliantly, though, and at times it wasn’t easy to see which team was down to 10.
They rode their luck at times, with France having a goal ruled out by VAR and former Chelsea goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger ending the 90 minutes with seven saves to her name, the most of any keeper at this tournament so far.
The Germans could even have taken the lead themselves, but this time Nusken was denied, seeing a penalty of her own saved by Pauline Peyraud-Magnin.
Instead we went to extra time and another 30 minutes of Germany stubbornly refusing to concede, as Berger produced her best save yet and France’s Melvine Malard hit the bar in the very last minute.
And so to a penalty shootout, after an incredible effort by Germany to hold on over 107 minutes of guelling football with 10 players.
Berger was at it again, saving France’s first effort by Amel Majri, but then Sara Dabritz missed the target to allow Baltimore to smash level at 3-3 after four attempts each, effectively taking things to sudden death.
Incredibly, Berger then stepped up to score herself, but was then confidently sent the wrong way by Jean-Francois.
It took until the seventh round of penalties for this epic tie to be decided, when Nusken made no mistake from 12 yards the second time around, and Berger saved once more.
That sent Germany into the Euro 2025 semi-finals, where they will meet Spain at 8pm UK time on Wednesday 23 July. England take on Italy in the other semi a day earlier.
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