Germany defied the odds in a chaotic encounter to beat France in a penalty shootout and reach the semi-finals of Euro 2025 – despite playing with 10 players from the 13th minute.<\/p>\n
The eight-time champions had Kathrin Hendrich sent off when, in a moment of madness, she pulled Griedge Mbock by her hair in the box.<\/p>\n
Christian Wuck’s side responded with a stubborn performance, resiliently holding on for extra-time before forcing penalties – and then winning in emphatic fashion.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger, who had produced an outstanding string of stops throughout the evening, was the hero as she made the decisive save to deny Alice Sombath and seal a 6-5 shootout victory.<\/p>\n
Not only was Hendrich shown a straight red card after a video assistant referee (VAR) intervention for foolishly tugging at Mbock’s hair, but France were subsequently awarded a penalty that Grace Geyoro calmly powered past Berger to put Les Bleues in front.<\/p>\n
But despite their double disadvantage, Germany, responded quickly and Sjoeke Nusken equalised with a glancing header to instil a sense of belief back in her team.<\/p>\n
Delphine Cascarino had a goal ruled out for offside before the break and Wuck’s side fought hard to enter the interval on level terms.<\/p>\n
His side remained resolute and were even the better side for periods, while they breathed a sigh of relief when Geyoro had a second goal disallowed as Maelle Lakrar was deemed to be in an offside position in the build-up.<\/p>\n
But Chelsea midfielder Nusken was left with her head in her hands when she missed the opportunity to put Germany ahead, sending her penalty straight at Pauline Peyraud-Magnin after Jule Brand had been brought down by Selma Bacha. <\/p>\n
After digging deep to take the tie to a tense shootout, Germany scored all but one of their seven spot-kicks, while Berger produced terrific saves to deny both Amel Majri and Sombath.<\/p>\n
Their hard-earned reward is a semi-final against world champions Spain on Wednesday at Stadion Letzigrund in Zurich.<\/p>\n
It is another quarter-final exit for France, who have been eliminated from this stage of the competition four times – more than any other nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany defied the odds in a chaotic encounter to beat France in a penalty shootout and reach the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-10009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}