The female national side is through to the semifinals of the European Football Championships after defeating France in a thrilling penalty shoot-out.

The score was 1-1 after 90 minutes and no goals were scored during the 30 minutes of extra time of the match that was played in Linköping, Sweden.

Denmark pulled ahead after a half-hour with a well-executed strike by 30-year-old Johanna Rasmussen. Heavy favourites France soon equalised with a penalty scored by Louisa Necib despite Danish goalkeeper Stina Petersen managing to get two hands on the ball.

Necib couldn’t repeat the effort during the shoot-out and had her penalty saved while France’s Sabrina Delannoy hit the post.

Denmark’s Theresa Nielsen also had her strike saved, but Janni Arnath secured Denmark’s advantage by converting her penalty and winning the penalty shoot-out 4-2.

“France are an extremely good team,” Rasmussen told Eufa.com. “When we went into extra time we were hoping to get to the penalties [because] our goalkeeper has been doing really well on those. This is just amazing, the most crazy thing I've ever been involved in.”

Denmark will now meet Norway in Thursday’s semi-final after the Scandinavian side easily defeated Spain 3-1 in their quarter final match.

Six-time winners Germany will meet Sweden in their semi-final match on Wednesday. Sweden brushed aside Iceland 4-0 in their quarter final while Germany narrowly defeated Italy 1-0.