Gritty Germany reached the Women's Euro 2025 semi-finals on Saturday after prevailing 6-5 in a penalty shootout against France after playing with 10 women for almost all of a gruelling match which finished 1-1 after extra time.
Ann-Katrin Berger was the hero by saving Amel Majri and Alice Sombath's penalties to secure a last-four clash with Spain to Germany, who will take on the world champions in Zurich on Wednesday.
Germany maintained their record of having never lost to France in a major summer tournament after battling back from going a goal and a woman down in the first 15 minutes to win a bruising encounter in Basel.
"I would have loved to have had the game in 90 minutes and done and dusted," Berger told reporters.
"I did my part of the game. In 120 minutes they (the team) worked incredibly hard and I think all the credit should go to the team, not me.
"Maybe it was the decisive moment in the penalty shootout but everyone here should talk about it with him (coach Christian Wueck) now about the performance of the team because that was amazing and incredible."
St Jakob-Park was dominated by fierce German support which flocked over the nearby border with Switzerland and roared their team on even after Kathrin Hendrich was sent off and gave away the penalty from which Grace Geyoro opened the scoring.
Sjoeke Nuesken -- who also missed a penalty in the second half -- levelled the scores 10 minutes later and, after a long battle to hold off France, Berger sent the majority of the crowd wild with her shootout stops. France have now fallen at the quarter-finals stage in eight of their last 10 Euros after losing a match in which they had two goals ruled out for offside.
"I don't think it was down to character, you have to remember that Germany are third in the FIFA rankings.
They sat back and it was hard to break them down -- they put in a huge effort against us," said France coach Laurent Bonadei.
"We couldn't make the difference, we had two goals ruled out for offside... it's a lack of being clinical in front of goal."
