“A Beautiful Gift“: Swiss women pioneers celebrate the game’s transformation

SION, Switzerland: On the terrace of a restaurant in the Swiss city of Sion sits a group of pioneers of women’s football in Switzerland who have seen the beautiful game change beyond recognition.

For ⁠72-year-old Madeleine Boll, seeing the city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland hosting three games in the Women’s European Championship, which is being staged across the country, is a proud moment.

The mascot of the tournament, a Saint Bernard puppy, bears her name, Maddli, in recognition of her role in advancing women’s football in Switzerland.

At 12 years old in 1965, Boll became the first woman in Switzerland to obtain a license to play football, with FC Sion’s boys’ youth team. But just months later it was taken away from her after the club said it had made an error.

“I was the happiest little girl. But the day they took away my license, I was the unhappiest because I didn’t understand why I was forbidden to play,” Boll told Reuters.

However, it marked the first in a series of landmark moments that enabled women’s inclusion in Swiss football.

By 1970 the first Swiss Women’s Football League was created, with Boll’s father, Jean Boll, its president. Madeleine later played for FC Sion, one of the earliest women’s football clubs in Switzerland.

“It’s a beautiful gift because it’s here that the beginnings of Swiss women’s football took root,” she said.

KEY MOMENT
A lot has changed since Boll and her generation played. There are now 40,000 registered women players and 134 female referees in Switzerland, according to the Swiss FA.

“It was different. We didn’t have jerseys, we didn’t have means to travel ... We had to make people understand that we are capable of playing,” said 72-year-old Rosemarie Siggen,