EURO 2025 lands in Switzerland lap

Article posted by Coliseum, April 7^th, 2023

Image: FC St. Gallen

Switzerland will host the 2025 women’s European Championship, European soccer’s governing body – the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) – said on April 4^th, beating out three other bids to stage the 16-team event.

‘Reuters’ stated that Switzerland last hosted a major soccer tournament in 2008, staging that year’s edition of the men’s Euros along with neighbors Austria.

The 2025 UEFA Women’s Championship will be the 14^th edition of the UEFA Women’s Championship, the quadrennial international football championship organized by UEFA for the women’s national teams of Europe. The tournament will be played in Switzerland in mid-2025. It will be the third edition since it was expanded to 16 teams. The tournament will return to its usual four-year cycle after the previous tournament was delayed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Nyon (Switzerland)-based the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach football in Europe and the transcontinental countries of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, as well as some Asian countries such as Israel, Cyprus and Armenia. The UEFA consists of 55 national association members. Because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the FIFA and UEFA suspended all Russian national teams and clubs from any FIFA and UEFA competitions.

Dominique Blanc, Swiss FA President, said in a statement, “This is a historic day for Switzerland, the Swiss Football Association (SFA) and women’s football. This major step will shape the development of women’s football at all levels.”

The Swiss Football Association is the governing body of football in Switzerland. It organizes the football league, the Swiss Football League and the Switzerland national football team. It is based in Bern. It was formed in 1895, was a founder member of FIFA in 1904 and joined the UEFA during its foundation year, 1954.

The Swiss FA said the first visits to the venues with UEFA were planned for April and May – “The tournament will take place over four weeks in June and July 2025 at the planned venues of Basel, Bern, Geneva, Zürich, St. Gallen, Sion, Lucerne, and Thun. The existing infrastructure will be used and the construction of additional stadiums, hotels or training grounds is not necessary according to the current state of knowledge.”

‘Reuters’ further stated that the UEFA received four bids to host the tournament, from Switzerland, France and Poland as well as a joint bid from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

The Nordic bid provided the strongest competition to Switzerland, making it to the UEFA Executive Committee’s final round of voting, where it received four votes to Switzerland’s nine.

Maintained Norwegian Football Federation President Lise Klaveness, “We believe we submitted a good application with a clear plan on how to create the best EUROS ever. We always knew that the competition would be tough, and we can only congratulate Switzerland who came away with the victory.”

Ukraine had also expressed interest in hosting the event before the Russian invasion.

The tournament was held in England in 2022, where the hosts won the title after beating Germany in the final at the 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium in Wembley, London (UK).

Last year’s tournament, which was postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had a projected global cumulative live viewership of 365 million, while a record crowd of 87,192 attended the final at Wembley.

Observed Lauren Hemp, England national team forward, “It’ll always be hard to top a home EUROS in front of the packed-out Wembley Stadium, obviously winning it as well, but I think looking forward to the future … there’s still going to be so many fans and so many people watching from back home.”

Germany is the most successful team in the competition, having won the title eight times.

Oslo (Norway)-based the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) is the governing body of football in Norway. It was formed in 1902 and is in charge of the men’s and women’s national teams, as well as the league systems for men and women.

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