BOSTON, Massachusetts, June 27 (Reuters) – Germany \u2060will need to up their game in their World Cup round of 32 against Paraguay \u2060or risk going home, with their top players yet to peak atthe tournament and expectations back \u200chome of a deep run in the competition piling pressure on the team.<\/p>\n
The four-time world champions came into the World Cup on a nine-match winning run and demolished Curacao 7-1 in their Group E opener before snatching a stoppage-time win against Ivory Coast to \u200bsecure top spot and a place in the knockoutstage for the first \u2060time in 12 years.<\/p>\n
They came into the \u2060tournament on the back of first-round exits in the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and looked set for \u2060a \u200c12th straight win before a shock 2-1 loss to Ecuador in their last group match snapped their streak and instantly raised alarm bells among their fans. <\/p>\n
Italso cast doubts over coach Julian Nagelsmann’spre-tournament confidence \u2060they could go all the way.<\/p>\n
Their biggest names in the squad — Florian \u200bWirtz, Jamal Musiala and Kai \u200cHavertz — have so far failed to live up to expectations, delivering largely below-par performances, especially in \u2060the last two matches. \u200bSubstitute Deniz Undav is Germany’s top scorer with three goals so far.<\/p>\n
“To reach the very big goals we know the players, who have developed into world-class players in the past couple of years, they have to deliver. That’s clear. The \u2060players know there is room for improvement,” Germany team director Rudi \u200bVoeller said in a press conference on Saturday. “We have to go to the limit.”<\/p>\n
Asked when the trio was expected to hit top form, Voeller said it would happen soon. “You have the feeling that this moment is near. Not \u2060much is missing for them to spark.”<\/p>\n
Paraguay, who advanced as one of the eight best third-place finishers at the expanded 48-team tournament, will be a hard nut to crack. <\/p>\n
After a 4-1 opening loss to co-hosts United States, they stunned Turkey 1-0 before a goalless draw against Australiaon Friday booked their spot in the knockout stage.<\/p>\n
With a \u200bdefensive resilience that earned them two consecutive clean sheets and a highly \u2060physical game, underdogs Paraguay will look to soak up pressure and hit the Germans on the break.<\/p>\n
“Recovering from such \u200ba hard result (against the U.S. team) was really hard for us, \u200cand in spite of that, our team has been very \u200bsolid in the past two games,” Paraguay coach Gustavo Alfaro said. “We will now recover in order to have all the players ready for the next match.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Karolos GrohmannEditing by Christian Radnedge)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON, Massachusetts, June 27 (Reuters) – Germany \u2060will need to up their game in their World Cup round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-764202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}