Basketball players beat surprise team
The title dream lives: Germany reaches EM final
Updated on September 12, 2025 – 6:24 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
The semi -finals started with plenty of pace. Finland initially pulled away, but then lost rhythm. Germany played up at times – but made it exciting again.
The German national team has been back in the final of a European Basketball Championship for the first time in 20 years. In the Latvian capital Riga, the team around DBB captain Dennis Schröder defeated outsider Finland with 98:86. Although Germany had almost 20 points more on Friday afternoon on Friday afternoon, the outsider made it exciting again in the third quarter. In the end, the reigning world champion kept the nerve, the dream of the European Championship title lives.
Against Finland, Schröder and Franz Wagner were the best German launchers with 26 and 22 points. Schröder also contributed twelve assists in front of 10,047 spectators.
In the second semi-final, Greece and Turkey face each other (from 8 p.m. in the live ticker at T-Online). The final then takes place like the game for third place on Sunday.
In the group phase in the Finnish city of Tampere, Germany had already outclassed the co-EM host with 91:61. But that didn’t matter in the heads of the Germans. “The victory from the preliminary round no longer counts. Finland will have the first game in the head, they will want to reciprocate,” said Center Daniel Theis.
The situation was strongly reminiscent of the disappointing Olympic Games last year. At the Olympics, too, the German team was celebrated in the preliminary round against host France after a gala, in order to fail in the second meeting with the French in the semi -finals and later stand up without a medal.
And so the world champion slept again in Riga as in the two games. The Finns, who were in the semi -finals for the first time at an EM, started with euphoria and pulled, driven by thousands of Finnish fans in the arena, to 14: 6.
In contrast, not much went together in Germany, Franz Wagner put his first four throws next to it. But the German team stayed calm and increased. Schröder met with a threesome, then Wagner stuffed the ball into the basket by dark. The German attack machinery was now rolling.