Bizarre Incident: Germany star is sent off after giving away a penalty for brutally pulling a France player's HAIR during Euro 2025 quarter-final in bizarre incident

A German star was sent off for pulling an opponent's hair during their country's Euro 2025 quarter-final against France on Saturday night.

Defender Kathrin Hendrich was shown a straight red card for the offence, for which she also gave away a penalty in the 13th minute of the match at St. JJakobsPark in Basel, Switzerland.

After Hendrich, 33, was dismissed, the resulting spot-kick was converted by Grace Geyoro to give France the lead.

However, Germany struck back just over ten minutes later when Sjoeke Nusken popped up with a leveller against the run of play.

The French then had two goals disallowed for offside, either side of the half-time interval, as Germany valiantly clung on despite being a player down.

The winner of the match will face world champions Spain, with Sarina Wiegman's Lionesses potentially waiting in the final, should they beat Italy, following their penalty shootout heroics against Sweden on Thursday.

The incident that saw Hendrich sent off mirrors a similar occurrence of what happened in the Club World Cup final last Sunday, when PSG's Joao Neves was sent off for pulling the hair of Chelsea left-back Marc Cucurella.

That saw referee Alireza Faghani send Neves off after he was deemed to have committed violent conduct.

Reacting to the incident on social media, fans were quick to bemoan Neves' actions.

One user wrote: 'Absolute headloss from Joao Neves. Completely unnecessary red card.'

A second chimed in: 'João Neves was shown a straight red for his behaviour! Shameful act on the football pitch!'

Another user stated: 'João Neves red card, Cucurella should never cut his hair'.

It marked a fractured and ugly end to a tournament that has not been short on controversy during its newly expanded format.

Players and managers have consistently complained about having to play in soaring summer temperatures of well over 30C in the United States.

Meanwhile, FIFA has had to deal with the ignominy of seeing some stadiums half-empty during games due to its deployment of dynamic pricing.

That policy, along with the decision to play next year's World Cup in the North American summer, presents big issues for football's governing body to solve ahead of the World Cup getting underway in 12 months.