Euro 2025 has been a roaring success for a number of reasons but Johnny Nic is left praying that money and corporate greed cannot ruin what has been built.
Last Friday, Robin and Rachel did the Spain v Switzerland game for us after the previous night’s England madness. Really enjoying this whole tournament. The vibe is good from the studio to the pitch. The whole thing enjoyed a peak audience of 7.4 million viewers on BBC One, the highest figures of Euro 2025 so far, a 65% audience share and there were also nearly 3m streams. It has been a triumph and brilliantly supported by more people than ever with attendances over 623,000
There will probably always be a degree of the ‘they’re not very good, are they?’ back-of-the-bus superannuated boyish sniggering by men who can’t believe we secretly don’t share their sexist stereotyping of women, as though we’re just putting on our support like a fashionable overcoat.
I note they have had to change their tactics in the face of the footballing excellence and their own irrelevance, to instead look to drum up pathetic accusations of gender-based hypocrisy, hoping it ‘reveals’ someone to be as sulphurous as their pathetic, insecure, deluded selves. What a miserable life these people must lead. Forever waiting in the BTL comments and social media to feed off the negativity they so hatefully create to indulge their own festering shame-inducing inadequacies.
In front of another sold-out crowd, there was much pre-game talk of Switzerland causing an upset, but it was pretty much all Spain who got an early penalty, which they missed hopelessly. There have been lots of rotten penalties this whole tournament – 50% have been missed.
The Swiss looked like the sort of team which is good at 0-0 but lacks edge after falling behind. They played well and defended ‘like beavers’, as Kammy would say, for 65 minutes until Spain scored and then added a brilliant second and it was all quite inevitable, even though they missed a second penalty.
Relaxed, good-natured broadcast from Alex and friends.
The stadium in Basel was full of 35,000 people for Germany v France, being equidistant from both. The grounds in Switzerland have been excellent with the corners filled in so the stadium looks compact and whole, the sound contained. And all the programmes have had an atypical tone and vibe. Relaxed, happy and informal. It’s really noticeable, perhaps because the presenters are all so at ease. Maybe they usually are but the overall tone has been different this time, less performative. Even commentator Sam Matterface seems better than normal. Lucy Ward is the co-comm and does a very sensible pre-match interview. She always talks without using the usual cliches and is clear and concise.
Laura Georges was with Karen and Laura for the game. There was a good interview with a relaxed and confident Michelle Agyemang who, at 19, seemed wise beyond her years. Karen illustrates how the Germans over-commit and leave themselves exposed. I think France were most people’s favourites before kick-off, though Germany usually beat them.
The crowds also have a different vibe to usual. Happy, smiling, not angry and I’d wager, not coked up and fighty.
Amazing start. Germany sending-off and penalty followed by a clever equaliser. The half flew by. Germany were a bit outplayed but hung on and fought for everything, considering they were a player short, in a very typical German fashion. They had the guts and an iron resolution. They survived a VAR-ed goal and it was all testing and smashing France’s bottle. France dominated and Germany did lots of last-ditch defending. Then France conceded a penalty but saved it. It was febrile.
Germany kept attacking and booting it long and being physical fraulines, France’s feminems not knowing quite how to deal with all this despite their obvious skill. I felt they had to score eventually. But as Lucy said, their plan B was to keep doing plan A. But with eight minutes of overtime, Germany couldn’t keep the ball. France had to score, didn’t they? But they couldn’t. Germany were so fit, aggressive and impressive and I felt they’d find a way to win, somehow.
The German goalie, Ann-Katrin Berger, a double cancer survivor, was just immense, making 11 saves and stopping an own goal in superhuman circumstances, stretching backwards elastically and scooping the ball out of a gaping goal before it crossed the line. Yeah, the keepers are rubbish aren’t they, son?
There was just no denying Germany. France lacked the guts and reverted to type – the perennial chokers. Berger even scored her penalty, as if to ram their dominance down French throats. Ironically, I think the dismissed player worked in Germany’s favour. They just locked the game down. It showed that sometimes grit and determination can beat skill and talent.
An absolutely epic encounter that was one of the best football matches I’ve seen all year and one I strangely wanted Germany to win. They’ll need all that grit to beat Spain in the semi.
Their joy at the end, as Berger sank to her knees after yet another save, was uplifting and felt like it was really what sport is all about and was why we all fell in love with football in the first place, which the Premier League has done so much to disavow.
Which brings us to the England semi-final. Wrighty is on hand to stir the emotions perfectly. What a game. I thought at one point Laura was going to cry. England were consistently underwhelming, messy, fractured and thoroughly malfunctioning but they have enough quality to take one chance.
If your nerves were not shredded by this, maybe you’re not alive. Wrighty, Karen and Laura were simply exhausted and a bit disbelieving that it had happened again. The whole tournament almost seems like a comic book, designed to make heroes out of the squad in the most extreme and unrealistic circumstances. This team has one more game to play, after which it’s becoming obvious that it all needs to change, no mere tinkering at the edges. It’s time for the next raft of brilliantly talented players to shine. They can’t be held back any longer.
Before big money knocked the romance of top-flight football out in favour of worshipping money, it always felt like this, like you wouldn’t believe if you didn’t live through it and it shows just what a brilliant sport it is, stripped of those heinous assumed ‘elite’ elements. It shows how far the game at the top level has fallen from its core into the arms of mammon first, second and last and how that fall has been welcomed and assumed normal despite its ludicrous, even immoral, exploitative, bloodsucking nature. This is ‘the beautiful game’ and the contrast to the normal ‘ugly’ game is profound. Never has the contrast been greater. Football’s corporatist tendencies, greedily hoovering money with every subscription and at every opportunity are divorcing the top flight from the rest of the football body and eating itself to sell its shit as gold. Let’s pray they don’t do the same to women’s football.
The radio commentary from Vicki Sparks and Karen Bardsley was for the ages and expressed the gut-wrenching emotion perfectly. The TV was done by Seb, who must be the lead comm soon; he’s great, and Lucy likewise. The equaliser with a minute to go was met with throat-tearing, astonished incredulity from everyone. Did anyone believe it?
MORE FROM JOHNNY NIC ON F365
👉 Pre-season money jaunts killing the planet and the players
👉 Club World Cup exposed by Euros even if Chelsea get ‘more money to waste on half-assed tattooed talent’
It doesn’t seem likely they’ll beat Spain, because they are easily the best team, though interestingly vulnerable defensively if you can get at them. But this tournament has shown you just never, ever know and that’s all we ask.
The following day Spain v Germany played out over 120 tense minutes. Germany should have won; they had enough good chances to do so, which will give England hope. But Spain were relentless and as Germany tired, they just held the ball. It was appropriate that Bonmati scored. Awful for Berger being beaten at her near post but without her, they’d never have got to the semi.
As the start of the Championship is now just two weeks away and, in football parlance, we go again, we have been royally treated with this tournament and the TV companies will be delighted how viewer numbers have grown. A peak audience of 10.2 million watched England’s semi-final, which averaged eight million viewers across the 120 minutes: ITV’s highest average audience of the year among adults and in the 16-34 age range.
England’s victory over Italy also broke streaming records, with ITVX having its biggest day of the year with 17.2m stream views and we have been treated to some great games brought to us by some great programmes. I hope it has informed all broadcasters of the standard they should be aiming for in the coming season and not just giving work to footballers and former footballers who talk in football’s bizarre adverb-averse lexicon of cliches.
