Whether Lia Wälti will play in the European Championship opener against Norway is a secret that nobody in the SFA wants to reveal.
01.07.2025, 20:44
01.07.2025, 21:09
SDA
It only takes a few seconds for her to come out. The question that is burning under the nails of everyone present. Will Lia Wälti be on the pitch on Wednesday, when the Swiss national team kick off their European Championship campaign at 9pm against Norway, or will she once again only be able to watch from the stands? In the long preparation, which has taken the Swiss women from Magglingen via Nottwil and Abtwil to Basel, the captain has mainly completed an individual program. The Arsenal midfielder has been suffering from a knee injury for a long time, so neither Wälti nor national coach Pia Sundhage wanted to take any risks too early.
Wälti's balance in rehab
The injury-related absences of Lara Marti, Ramona Bachmann and Luana Bühler have shown the national team staff just how quickly the European Championship dream can be dashed. Wälti sits in the press center at St. Jakob Park on Tuesday evening. It is hot. Fans are a sought-after but rare commodity. Gaëlle Thalmann has thought ahead and brought her own handy fan.
The former national goalkeeper sits in the back row, with Sandy Maendly in front of her and Martina Moser a few chairs to her right. The greats who have represented Switzerland at previous tournaments want to hear what Wälti and Sundhage have to say on the day before the home European Championships finally get underway.
"I've worked hard to be here today," says Wälti. "But whether I'll be on the pitch is the coach's decision." It's the kind of sentence players say when they want to say something without actually saying anything. But one day before the first match at a European Championship, the tactics begin in front of the microphones.
Unsurprisingly, neither Wälti nor Sundhage stand up and announce that Switzerland will field what is probably their most important individual player. The element of surprise should be preserved, after all, in a game like this, in front of a crowd like this, nuances can decide whether the goal of reaching the quarter-finals of a European Championship for the first time has come closer for Switzerland on Thursday or is already much less realistic.
"If I hadn't been fit enough, a forfeit like Luana's would have been an issue for me too," says Wälti. "But I've always tried to maintain a balance between risk and caution during my rehab." The team had already lost enough important players and a lot of international experience after the withdrawals. "Now it's important that we stay together and make a successful start to this tournament."
"She makes everyone better"
Pia Sundhage listens to Wälti's statements. Wearing white headphones, she has them translated into English. She then lauds the Emmental native. Wälti is a player who never loses her cool on the pitch and makes good decisions even under pressure. "When she's on the pitch, you can feel it in the team. She makes all her teammates better."
The Scandinavian says how she is in a dilemma - the dilemma of whether to give Wälti more recovery time and only use her in the group matches against Iceland and Finland. Or to take the risk and send her onto the pitch against Norway. "It's really not an easy situation," says Sundhage. Before a member of the media tries his luck one last time and hopes for the answer that everyone wants to hear: Is Lia Wälti going to play? Sundhage smiles and says: "We will see."
