Momentous Euros offer reminder of progress

As Switzerland prepares for its big moment, the narrative arc of women's football in the country has been transformed

- Jonathan Liew

In 1957 the Swiss newspaper Sport published a short editorial under the headline "Women's Football?" Furious that a women's friendly between Germany and the Netherlands was being hosted in Basel, the writer mocked: "This event is not about football, but rather should be classified as an exhibition or circus performance."

This evening, in front of a sell-out crowd, Switzerland will play their opening game of a home European Championship that will be one of the biggest sporting events held in the country. Sport newspaper, sadly, will be unable to chronicle the event, having folded in 1999. Life moves on pretty fast.

The narrative arc of women's football in Switzerland is one that will be familiar to the game's pioneers: an agonising and incremental journey from apathy to hostility to mockery to inertia to change. Women were not allowed to play organised 11-a-side football until the late 1960s. Women's leagues were not fully integrated into the Swiss football association until 1993. This, by the way, was three years after the north-eastern canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden became the last Swiss province to give women the vote.