Ann-Katrin Berger is flying. The ball is flying. A few yards away, near the penalty spot, Clara Mateo of France already has her arms raised in celebration. A heroic German defensive rearguard is about to end in a misdirected defensive header, a looping own goal and a heartbreaking defeat. But a 34-year-old double cancer survivor, largely written off by her own country’s media before this quarter-final, has other ideas.
The mechanics of the save itself are easy enough to explain. Berger is about five yards out of her goal, and so has to back-pedal furiously while also keeping her eye on the flight. At the last moment, it looks like the ball is about to beat her. Which is the point at which Berger flings herself backwards and upwards, finding every last gram of strength, straining every last muscle, the sort of moment you spend a lifetime training for. She claws it away with her fingers. Falls heavily on her shoulders. Accepts the congratulations of her teammates, who look like they have just seen a biblical miracle.
And, you know, perhaps they had. Was this the moment Germany wrote their destiny? It certainly didn’t feel that way at the time. Twenty minutes still remained. France still had all the possession and an extra player. But maybe it was the moment when Germany’s mission sharpened to the finest of points, when they determined above all that a save of such cosmic brilliance must not be for nothing.
It had been an epic night, an excruciating night, and for the depleted, exhausted Germany a night of sheer refusal. Forced to play for almost two hours (including added time) with 10 players after the early dismissal of Kathrin Hendrich, boasting a passing accuracy of just 51%, they withstood one of the deadliest attacks in the tournament with their bodies and every last breath in them.
By this point the game had long since ceased to take any recognisable form or shape: just two tired teams finding increasingly creative ways to collide with each other. At one point in extra time the sensational Jule Brand went on a dribble past halfway and, seeing three blue shirts congregating on her, basically changed her mind, let the ball go and decided to get back into position.
As for France, it was a night for reverting to type. For confirming every pre-existing stereotype of them. For demonstrating why this team of such incredible individual talent have never been able to fulfil that talent as a collective. Forced to break down a team with no intention of giving them the space in behind they love to exploit, they were utterly devoid of ideas, of creativity, of passing guile, of any real strategy beyond giving it to the wingers and seeing if the next stepover might work any better than the last.
Perhaps you could argue that Hendrich’s red card for pulling the hair of Griedge Mbock actually simplified Germany’s task. Even so, it would have taken a brave seer to predict anything but a French victory at that point, especially after an injury to Sarai Linder at right-back. But her replacement, Sophia Kleinherne, was immense, as were the two big pre-match selections by Christian Wück: Giovanna Hoffmann up front and Franziska Kett at left-back.
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Kleinherne completed just two passes all night, Brand just eight. But of course these were not the key milestones. Try Rebecca Knaak’s 13 clearances, Janina Minge’s 11, the 16 tackles, Sjoeke Nüsken’s first tournament goal. And of course there were nine saves from the hands of Berger, a goalkeeper who could have been cherry-picked for this assignment, one relying less on silky ball-work than on sheer, gravelly defiance.
Berger had come in for considerable criticism after some misplaced passes in the 4-1 defeat by Sweden. And of course her old-school style sometimes feels at odds with the more progressive, possession-based kind of football the modern Germany want to play. But give her a goal and she will protect it with her life. She’s beaten thyroid cancer twice. She can probably deal with your inswinging cross.
As the minutes leaked away, as France had a goal disallowed, as Germany missed their own penalty, the German fans behind Berger’s goal slowly began to warm to their task. Increasingly the French players were bearing forlorn expressions, negative body language, crushed by the burden of having to win this match several times over simply to win it once.
Or perhaps not at all. Because after two hours and 13 penalties, Berger was flying again. Amel Majri had been the first to fail, then Berger had scored a penalty of her own, and now Alice Sombath had put her kick at a pleasant height, and once more Berger was the commander of angles and time. She palmed the ball away. Rose to her knees. And in the moments before her victorious teammates mobbed her, Berger was simply kneeling there: imploring us to adore her, a woman who through everything had never stopped believing in herself.
