{"id":600485,"date":"2025-11-29T03:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T03:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/600485\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T03:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T03:21:15","slug":"womens-nations-league-spains-cata-coll-denies-germany-to-keep-final-in-the-balance-nations-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/600485\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s Nations League: Spain\u2019s Cata Coll denies Germany to keep final in the balance | Nations League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Germany dominated the first leg of their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/nations-league\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nations League<\/a> final against Spain on Friday but could not find the back of the net as they were held to a scoreless draw before Tuesday\u2019s second leg in Madrid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Germans racked up 19 attempts on goal, but Spanish goalkeeper Cata Coll was outstanding in the first half, much to the frustration of the home fans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThe result is positive and we will see them again in the Metropolitano [Stadium],\u201d Coll said. \u201cThis is Germany. We knew they would be dangerous and have their chances. Fortunately, they didn\u2019t put them in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Germany forward Klara B\u00fchl played a starring role, but her threatening dribbles and powerful shooting could not get the better of the Spanish defence, and the Germans were almost caught out when Esther Gonz\u00e1lez hit the woodwork for Spain just after the break.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Despite difficult conditions with rain falling steadily through the second half, B\u00fchl never relented and she finally got a shot past Coll, only to see it bounce back off the foot of the lefthand post and away to safety.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Winger Jule Brand followed up that effort with a shot that skimmed off the top of the crossbar in the 76th minute, but despite 19 attempts on goal for Germany and nine for the visitors, neither side managed to score, leaving the tie delicately balanced ahead of the second leg.<\/p>\n<p>Germany\u2019s outstanding Klara B\u00fchl tries to get the better of Spain&#8217;s Ona Batlle in Kaiserslautern. Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw\/Reuters<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cEveryone who saw today\u2019s match knows that we didn\u2019t just keep up but played really well,\u201d the Germany defender Janina Minge said. \u201cIf we can convert our chances and keep defending as we did we can get the win on Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Spain\u2019s first victory over Germany came at the 2025 European Championship semi-finals where Aitana Bonmat\u00ed scored in extra time.<\/p>\n<p><a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"#EmailSignup-skip-link-10\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1sbse14\">Sign up to Moving the Goalposts<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1xjndtj\">No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women\u2019s football<\/p>\n<p><strong>Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/help\/privacy-policy\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/privacy\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/terms\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n<p id=\"EmailSignup-skip-link-10\" tabindex=\"0\" aria-label=\"after newsletter promotion\" role=\"note\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Spain have reached the finals of the last four major tournaments. They beat England in the 2023 World Cup and France in the 2024 Women\u2019s Nations League, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2025\/jul\/27\/chloe-kelly-winning-penalty-england-beat-spain-win-euro-2025\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lost to England in last summer\u2019s European Championship final<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In the first leg of the third-place match in Reims, Mbock Bathy headed a 96th-minute winner to give France a 2-1 lead over Sweden, who had equalised through Arsenal\u2019s Stina Blackstenius in the second half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany dominated the first leg of their Nations League final against Spain on Friday but could not find&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-600485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115630839118101169","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}