One heck of a year for Basel

2025 was one heck of a year to be living in Basel, with the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest and the Women’s Euros arriving within three months of each other, and both moments carrying that slightly surreal feeling that the city had stepped forward and found itself unexpectedly central, watched, discussed and, for a while at least, amplified. It was the football that lingered.

The atmosphere you can’t manufacture

I went to the opening match, a semi-final and the final, with friends and family across the tournament and at each one there was the same unmistakable charge in the air, not the brittle edge of novelty or the forced volume of hype, but something steadier, something that felt as though it had been building quietly for years and had finally reached a point where it could stop apologising for existing. You could sense it in the trams before kick-off, in the flags folded over shoulders, in the parents explaining line-ups to children who didn’t need much explaining at all.

From excitement to belief

The opening game, Switzerland against Norway, was a sold-out sea of red and noise, but what struck me was not the volume so much as the tone; it was loud without being aggressive, buoyant without being performative, joyful in a way that didn’t need to announce itself. There was no posturing, no tribal chest-beating, just the simple pleasure of being present at something that felt communal rather than combative.

By the semi-final against France, excitement had thickened into belief, and you could feel the stadium settle into its own confidence. The Marseillaise rose at full volume, tackles landed with intent, and that peculiar ripple of sound began in one corner and rolled across the stands like electricity seeking ground. Fathers lifted daughters to see, women in their twenties swapped scarves with girls half their age, and what might once have felt borrowed or provisional instead felt entirely owned.

A final close to home

And then the final. England winning it, after so many near misses on the men’s side, carried a quiet symmetry that felt less triumphant than resolved, as if a narrative that had been slightly off balance for years had gently corrected itself. When Chloe Kelly scored, the noise was extraordinary, not just in decibels but in texture, flags rising, people crying, that collective surge that only happens when something slightly larger than sport crystallises in a single moment.

What made it land differently for me was proximity. This wasn’t unfolding on a distant screen; it happened a few tram stops from home, on Swiss soil, in a stadium we pass without ceremony most weeks. That nearness alters memory. It embeds it.

When it feels normal, it’s real

My daughter followed the tournament as if it were a personal undertaking. She already adored Lia Wälti, but by the final whistle she had added Chloe Kelly and Leah Williamson to the list and had decided, with the sort of unshakeable certainty only children possess, that she was now an Arsenal supporter for life. Months later she went out at Halloween dressed as Chloe Kelly, England shirt, ponytail, headband, entirely unconcerned that she was the only one on the street not dressed as a ghost or a witch.

What struck me was how unremarkable it seemed to her. She didn’t frame it as progress, didn’t pause to consider whether girls playing football was noteworthy, because in her world it isn’t. Women play, women win, medals belong to whoever earns them. That’s how you know something has shifted properly, when it no longer needs to be described as change.

When I was her age, women’s matches weren’t on television, there were no posters, no mainstream narrative to step into. You had to imagine yourself into those spaces. She doesn’t. She’s already there.

And it still feels remarkable to have been there when England won a final, almost like being granted a kind of second sporting citizenship after years of watching the men’s team fall short.