Women’s European Championships Round-Up: Germany v Norway Final

Hi, it’s Martin ‘Werewolfie’ Adams, comedy satire sports correspondent at the Greenygrey with a not so funny round-up from the women’s European Championships (not reflecting a lack of humour in women). Congratulations to the Norway women, who qualified for Sunday’s European Championships final last night with a penalty-kicks win over the plucky Danes.

Eidfjord war memorial

Eidfjord Norway Photos 

It is now left to the Norwegians to provide resistance to German domination of the competition.

Maybe they can take inspiration from the World War Two Norwegian resistance, who are remembered in one of Marc Latham’s Eidfjord photos from the t25y.wordpress.com website.

Not that the German women are like the World War Two German men who invaded Scandinavia. And a lot of them were just normal people really; just caught up in the whirlwind that had gripped their political system.

German Confidence Helps them Win 

Heidi Klum modeling at The Heart Truth Fashion Show 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although the German women have dominated the competition by winning the last five championships, and seven of the last eight, with only a Norway victory interrupting the sequence, the Germans were under strength in this competition, with several players out injured.

So the Germans did well to defeat the Swedish hosts 1-0 in the other semi-final, with the occasion seeming to get to the Swedish players; along with a dubious refereeing decision disallowing their goal when they did get the ball in the German net.

To try and avoid a John Inverdalism, in the perilous territory of men reporting women’s sports, we have used a photo of German model Heidi Klum above, rather than any of the German women’s football team; that’s not to say there aren’t any ‘lookers’ on the German team, it’s just to avoid allegations of ‘sexism’ or ‘favouritism’.

We Love Scandinavian Women  

English: Map showing two of the common definitions of “Scandinavia”; a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe: the most common usage: the three monarchies; Denmark, Norway and Sweden an extended usage: including Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sweden has provided an excellent championships, with the crowd support reflecting their position as one of the top gender equality countries in the world.

Norway is just ahead of Sweden in the 2012 rankings (third and fourth), while Germany is surprisingly down in thirteenth. Iceland and Finland are the top two. Ireland and New Zealand are fifth and sixth, before the other Scandinavia country, Denmark.

The U.K. is down in 18th, surprisingly one place above Cuba, which I thought would be higher with their socialist system. Another surprise to me is that the U.S.A. is down in 22nd.