Filled bars and an Oranje invasion in Lucerne: This was the first days of the European Football Championship

The phone behind the bar at the Calvados in Zurich rings. "Club World Cup? So, men's football? Yes, just come, there aren't many people," says the bartender. Actually, two men are sitting in a corner watching the Bayern Munich vs. Paris Saint-Germain match, a match that was also the Champions League final.

The others, a few dozen people, have come for the women's football. They sit in front of the large screens on Idaplatz, many in football jerseys, French, English, and Swiss shirts, with an orange one here and there for the Netherlands. All the seats are taken.

It's Saturday evening, the fourth day of the European Football Championship in Switzerland. The tournament has finally arrived, after weeks of the national team players' smiles on what felt like every other advertising poster.

Now the teams are here, the fans in the eight host cities, the screens outside the bars, which are benefiting from the warm weather of the first few days. Visibility is always the biggest argument for the associations when they host a major event, and this European Championship is no different: Women's football should be present, it should take up space.

He's doing this in Switzerland. There are details like the traffic light men in Basel, who become football-playing women for the duration of the European Championship. There's the fact that in Zurich alone, 40 bars are showing the games. Even though the public viewings are often smaller than at men's tournaments, this would have been unthinkable at previous women's finals.

And women's football is also taking center stage in the larger world. In the form of sold-out stadiums and fan marches through the city. On Saturday evening, Lucerne transformed into a sea of ​​orange, as is the case all over the world when the Dutch national team plays. Switzerland has also experienced the Orange invasion before, in 2008 at the men's European Championship on home soil.

Now, thousands of people in Lucerne are once again jumping back and forth to Snollebollekes' song "Links rechts" on their way to the stadium. On Wednesday, there will be an Oranje party in Zurich: The Dutch will face England in a top match at 6 p.m. at the Letzigrund Stadium.

Swiss fans are also taking over the cities. At the opening match in Basel, despite 35-degree heat, around 2,000 people marched to the stadium together, led by the newly formed Swiss women's fan club. Those without tickets sat in front of the big screen at Barfüsserplatz or Messeplatz. To cool off, people retreated to the Stadtcasino, where the newly published books by Lia Wälti and Coumba Sow were available.

The national anthem, sung with great pathos by Beatrice Egli, moved even seasoned football fans at St. Jakob-Park, while captain Lia Wälti led the team with tears in her eyes. The difference from other women's international matches was not only the record crowd, but also the relatively few children in the stadium. The kick-off times are a slight disappointment: the Swiss women's team kicks off at 9 p.m.; including the journey home, that's too late for many.

So, why not just cheer on the game at home in front of the TV? And how! Up to 822,000 people watched Switzerland's opening match against Norway (1:2) on SRF, corresponding to a market share of 66 percent. By comparison, just three years ago at the last European Championship in England, the numbers were significantly worse. Between 177,000 and 272,000 people watched Switzerland's three group stage matches on SRF, corresponding to market shares between 26 and 35 percent.

Interest is also rising sharply in Germany: 8.2 million people watched the DFB team's 2-0 opening victory against Poland on Friday evening on ARD, a third more than at its first European Championship match in 2022. Among young audiences, i.e. 14- to 49-year-olds, the market share was even twice as high as three years ago.

Back to Switzerland, back to the present, where more people have bought tickets for a Women's European Championship than ever before . Access to the fan zone on Bundesplatz in Bern had to be temporarily restricted on the Sunday before Switzerland's second match because the crowds were so large. A record was even set during the joint walk to Wankdorf: 12,000 Swiss and 2,000 Iceland fans made it the largest fan march ever at a Women's European Championship. On Saturday evening, the official public viewing on Europaallee in Zurich was also well attended. The first few hundred spectators sat in front of the big screen on the sun-warmed asphalt, hundreds more stood further back in dense rows.

In the tough Group D, England is playing against France (1:2). This high-class match could just as easily have been the final, as evidenced by this. Two girls sit next to each other on the floor, watching spellbound. One is wearing a Jude Bellingham shirt, the other a Kylian Mbappé shirt. No matter, football is football.

The match is taking place just a few kilometers away at the sold-out Letzigrund stadium. The wave of cheers repeatedly ripples through the stadium, over the English and French fans, the latter singing the Marseillaise after their team's 2-0 win. There are a striking number of young women there, many of whom are likely new to football. They are drawn by the much-praised uniqueness of women's games; compared to the men's league matches, the atmosphere is refreshingly relaxed. Even in the hectic, emotional finale, there is no aggression of any kind in the air.

The British newspaper "The Guardian" waxed almost poetic about the match in Zurich, writing of a "dreamy Swiss summer day" that culminated in the Letzigrund, "with the peak of Üetliberg peeping across from the south." The Letzigrund, a stadium whose existence as an athletics arena "doesn't diminish its appeal," by the way. What a European Championship can do.