In the 113th minute of Spain’s Euro 2025 semi-final against Germany, Aitana Bonmati received a pass from Athenea del Castillo inside the area, turned, faced the goal, saw Ann-Katrin Berger had left a space to her left and, with barely any angle to work with, scored in the small space left open by the goalkeeper.
“When the ball went in, I started running like crazy. I didn’t know where to go,” Spain midfielder Bonmati said. “I found the whole bench on their feet and I went for it. This goal belongs to everyone. We all work for moments like this and what better way to share it than with the group.”
Everyone followed her, celebrating on top of her. Others, like Olga Carmona, collapsed on the pitch, wanting to cry to digest what had just happened.
After a hard-fought match, they had done it, achieving two milestones: beating Germany, a team Spain had never beaten before, and reaching the final of a European Championship for the first time. Now they have the chance to add to their World Cup triumph from 2023 and Nations League success of 2024.
When Bonmati was lying on a hospital bed on June 27 with viral meningitis, watching Spain’s match against Japan before the team travelled to Lausanne for the Euros, there were fears she would not be able to play in the tournament, let alone score one of the most important goals in the history of Spanish women’s football.
She visualised her return and worked to make it happen as quickly as possible, getting back onto the pitch as a substitute for her team’s opening game in Switzerland less than a week after her diagnosis.
What appeared to the rest of the world to be a rapid and almost miraculous recovery seemed to her to be a process that was slower than she had expected.
“Aitana needs to be stopped,” head coach Montse Tome said at a press conference before the match against Portugal.
The player’s ambition and determination are very strong. She started by playing 15 minutes against Portugal, 45 against Belgium and against Italy she was in the starting line-up, playing the full 90 minutes to regain her confidence.
She repeated this performance against Switzerland in the quarter-finals, providing a top-class assist to Del Castillo with her heel to score the first goal of Spain’s 2-0 victory. That’s where she earned her first player of the match award of the tournament. Until then, she had lacked sharpness but there was no doubt she was back to her best against Germany on Wednesday.
The best players show up in the biggest games and Bonmati is particularly good at that. That is one of the reasons why she has two Ballon d’Or awards.
Spain dominated the match against Germany for practically the entire game. Esther Gonzalez, Claudia Pina and Mariona Caldentey tried everything, from inside the area and from long range. Even Irene Paredes hit the post in the 41st minute. Berger went into the break with a mischievous smile.
In the second half, Germany tired but Spain were unable to take advantage of this to do any damage. They had a total of 22 attempts, nine on target, eight off target, four blocks and hit the woodwork once.
In the last minute, Klara Buhl and then a rebound from Carlotta Wamser could have eliminated Spain but goalkeeper Cata Coll came to their rescue with a double save. She celebrated as if she had scored.
Cata Coll celebrates with her Spain team-mates after denying Germany (Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)
In extra time, when everything seemed set for another penalty shootout, Bonmati made the difference at the other end.
As against Switzerland, the Del Castillo-Bonmati combination paid off again. This time it was the other way around, with Del Castillo assisting and the Barcelona player scoring.
“We studied the goalkeeper and we realised in this action sometimes the (near) post was free,” Bonmati said. “I didn’t think twice about that (going for the near post) because I didn’t want it to reach penalties.”
Curiously, the two players who were decisive, Coll and Bonmati, were the two major issues in the run-up to the Euros. With Bonmati dealing with viral meningitis, Coll was suffering from tonsillitis and ended up missing the entire group stage.
“It seems like it was written in the stars,” Paredes said. “It looked like they were out of the game, then there were doubts about whether they would make it, and today they were the stars.”
Spain will now meet England in Zurich, a match that will be a repeat of the 2023 World Cup final, which they won 1-0.
“Today I feel like we have made history again,” said Bonmati. “For the first time, we have reached the final of a European Championship and we have beaten Germany, which we had never done before. I am proud to belong to this generation of footballers who are achieving so much. This is not over yet.”
(Top photo: Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)