Euro 2025
Never no longer Swiss will be able to organize such an event
This euro is Dominique Blanc’s baby, outgoing president of the ASF. It is a success, but which should only be the beginning of something.
A tide of Swiss supporters for the happiness match against Finland, in Geneva, during Euro 2025. A popular success, a last demonstration of this scale that Switzerland was able to organize, before it still does not do in the future.
Freshfocus
- Dominique Blanc recalls how Switzerland obtained this female Euro and what made its success.
- The president of the ASF, who will leave his duties at the end of the competition, knows that Switzerland will no longer be able to organize, alone, the final phases of major tournaments in the future.
- There is also talk of the challenges of this euro for the women’s football of tomorrow in Switzerland.
It’s always simpler afterwards. Today, obviously, Euro 2025 is a huge popular success, everywhere in Switzerland. The women’s Swiss selection was carried by its audience all over the country. The inheritance left by the event promises to be fruitful. Success is great for a small country like Switzerland. But it was not won in advance. At a time when this euro enters its final straight, you have to go up the thread.
Wind the coil in the opposite direction is to remember where you go to better understand where you arrived and where you still have to go. It tells a path and on this path there is Dominique Blanc.
Dominique Blanc will leave the presidency of the ASF after this Euro 2025, which will have been his baby from the start.
KEYSTONE
The president of theASF lives his last moments in this position. He even benefited from an additional month, this month of July, to complete his last mandate in his role, before giving way to Peter Knäbel, his successor.
Euro 2025 in Switzerland is him, Dominique Blanc. It is his baby, gave birth to a will never denied. Back on a trajectory and its perspectives.
Lisbon rap in 2023
Switzerland obtained the organization of this event April 4, 2023. Already, a signal was sent before the vote of the UEFA delegates. It was in Lisbon. You have to imagine men in suit and tie, who examine the various applications.
“We were the only ones, for the last presentation of our project, to send two women to the front of the stage,” explains Dominique Blanc. There was Marion Daube, director of women’s football at ASF, and Lou Kaena, a Zurich’s rape. At the end, after our last presentation video, just before the decisive vote, we had a few minutes left. Lou Kaena then took the microphone and placed between the tables of the delegates to interpret a frenzied rap. ”
It may not be what he alone has tipped the scales. But it was a strong signal. It took three laps for Switzerland to be designated as the organizing country of Euro 2025. The competition was tough.
Faced with Switzerland, for adversaries, Poland, the Scandinavian countries and France. The main advantage of the Swiss candidacy? The promise of a friendly euro, in a small country, the proximity of host cities. Switzerland is the Lillehammer of the Olympic Games, the last games with a human face. A Swiss adventure still made possible with a competition with sixteen teams.
No more possible in the future
If the success is immense, it will remain the last for the country: never more will be able to organize, alone, such a football event. What is a short day long for a male euro is also, now, for a continental female competition: among girls, we are already talking about a passage to 24 teams, or even more.
“Yes, it will not happen anymore,” notes Dominique Blanc. The volume that this competition takes and will still take, in terms of necessary infrastructure or the number of teams in the final phase, will prohibit Switzerland from launching itself. So it’s an honor to have been able to carry out this project. ”
Her baby was born, the stadiums are full, the Swiss raised the crowds from the start.
The objectives of tomorrow
But the most important is perhaps elsewhere and it was pointed out before the competition by Dominique Blanc and the ASF: the heritage, “Legacy” for the modernity in English of the project.
Alisha Lehmann, one of the figures of this Swiss selection, which has seduced an entire country. These impulses must materialize after the euro by political decisions, to allow the development of women’s football in Switzerland.
KEYSTONE
Many objectives targeted: for basic women’s football, go from 40,000 to 80,000 dismissed, also double the number of coaches and referees from 2500 to 5000; For elite women’s football, double the audience in terms of spectators and viewers; For selection, qualify for the final stages of major tournaments in order to maintain the movement; For the governing bodies, more women in decision -making positions.
With its euro, Swiss women’s football has already won its bet today, on lawns and stadiums. But it is only half-time the match for its concrete development.
For the rest, strong political decisions will be required (infrastructure, land and changing rooms dedicated to girls). They are essential: wanting to leave an inheritance that will explode the number of practitioners without accompanying this movement with the infrastructure that is lacking, it would be shot in the foot. Ballot, for those who want to develop football.
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