![\"Paraguay's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4TLXWDD73H7EVMYKH75CXYMIII.jpg\")
Paraguay’s Julio Enciso celebrates scoring their goal to take a 1-0 lead. Photograph: Nick Potts\/PA. <\/p>\nWorld Cup second round: Germany 1 Paraguay 1 (Paraguay win 4-3 on penalties)<\/p>\n
How badly did Germany really want to win this World Cup second-round game against Paraguay, the prize for which would be to go to Philadelphia on the 4th of July and be humiliated by France on the grandest scale? <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just say they did not play like men possessed, unless the thing that possessed them was a brooding angst and disillusionment over the length and, when you get down to it, pointlessness, of their 2026 World Cup campaign. <\/p>\n
This was a match between a team that seems to have been leached of all its stereotypical national virtues since winning the World Cup in 2014, and another that has enthusiastically re-embraced its own. <\/p>\n
Paraguay are a bit like Uruguay, without Uruguay\u2019s history of producing great attacking players. They defend with bitter determination and eventually lose, but proving that bitter determination is the whole point. <\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s cardinal football virtues were also determination and tenacity, but most people born in the 21st century can\u2019t remember a German team that played like that. <\/p>\n
Replete with nice technical footballers but weirdly deficient in intensity and drive, Germany have become an international Spurs. Occasionally stylish, seldom convincing, always brittle. <\/p>\n
A glorious sunny evening at the Gillette Stadium in Boston was a better setting than this match deserved. A few thousand empty seats showed that Germany v Paraguay had not electrified the resale market, and nobody who decided to hang on to their thousand or so dollars rather than buy a late ticket will be regretting their decision. <\/p>\n
Clearly visible in a canopied TV box at one end of the pitch was the tall figure of J\u00fcrgen Klopp, who could be picked out from the far end of the stadium by his dominant body language alone. <\/p>\n
Klopp has been looming over Germany\u2019s campaign from the outset. Here, he got what he had been asking for since the beginning \u2212 the Stuttgart forward Deniz Undav, who had three goals and two assists as a substitute, starting ahead of the struggling Jamal Musiala. <\/p>\n
In the absence of Musiala, you might have expected Germany\u2019s creative focus to shift towards Florian Wirtz \u2212 but the Liverpool player was again positioned on the left wing where, despite his team-mates trying to give him plenty of the ball, he struggled to make himself relevant in the first half. <\/p>\n
Wirtz lacks most of the qualities of a top-level winger. He is small, not strong, and not quick. The thing he is good at is seeing and playing quick clever passes, but out on the left he was too far from his team-mates to use these skills to dangerous effect. Instead he was often alone in a lot of space, and in space the defenders usually dominate Wirtz. <\/p>\n
Paraguay sat in a 4-4-2 and watched Germany stroke leisurely passes around the outside of their formation. Who was going to make something happen? The eye drifted again towards Wirtz. Why wasn\u2019t Julian Nagelsmann playing him inside? It might be because, besides the lack of size, strength and pace, there is often a worrying kind of passivity to Wirtz. <\/p>\n
One of the best goals of the World Cup so far was Lionel Messi\u2019s late second against Austria. What was so impressive about it was the way Messi, two days short of his 39th birthday, flung himself bodily at a ball and smashed it through the covering defenders to score. <\/p>\n
The desire to get to that ball first, the single-minded force of the action \u2212 it\u2019s a quality that doesn\u2019t depend on physical strength or speed, but has to do with anticipation, determination, and some kind of primal competitive drive. Not every player has it. Michael Owen had it. Luka Modric has it. Wirtz … we have not seen it. Too slow for the wing, too passive for the centre: not great for a \u00a3100m+ player.<\/p>\n
Paraguay won an astonishing 70 per cent of the duels in the first half, and it was no surprise when they took the lead just before half time. <\/p>\n
A Paraguayan corner was cleared outside the German area. Running after it was Wirtz, but as so often he was second to the ball. <\/p>\n
Paraguay pressed again with Miguel Almiron down the right, and he drew Aleksandar Pavlovic and Nathaniel Brown before slipping a simple pass back outside to the overlapping Mat\u00edas Galarza. The German markers having played themselves out of the game, Galarza had time to pick his target, and his driven cross was met by Enciso with a firm downward header that gave Manuel Neuer no chance. <\/p>\n
Paraguay’s Julio Enciso celebrates scoring their goal to take a 1-0 lead. Photograph: Nick Potts\/PA. <\/p>\n
Going behind prompted an immediate change of tack from Germany. Before Paraguay scored, Germany had crossed the ball nine times in 42 minutes. They proceeded to hit 16 crosses in the next 20 minutes, and the switch to ultra-direct tactics eventually paid off. <\/p>\n
Wirtz may lack many of the qualities that make a good winger but he can whip in a decent ball, and on 54 minutes Paraguay afforded him the space to do so. His diagonal right-footed inswinger whistled in front the left and Kai Havertz rose highest to divert it just inside the far post. <\/p>\n
![\"Germany's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/YWSSCA4PW3LL4OQJFSKAUUGIF4.jpg\")
Germany’s Kai Havertz celebrates his equaliser. Photograph: Mauro Pimentel\/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n
Germany had already rejigged by then, with Leon Goretzka replacing Felix Nmecha at half-time, and on 63 minutes Musiala replaced Undav, who had not replicated his supersub impact in his starting role. <\/p>\n
Paraguay were digging in and not leaving their trenches. On 76 minutes Wirtz\u2019s loose crossfield pass was intercepted to set up a potentially dangerous counter, but only three Paraguayans joined the attack, with the rest holding their positions. <\/p>\n
On 82 minutes, Joshua Kimmich\u2019s sloppy pass was cut out but again no Paraguayans ran forward. They wanted it to be penalties already. <\/p>\n
In extra time, Germany continued to press wanly, without conviction. Lacking ideas to pick apart Paraguay\u2019s massed defence, they reverted to crosses that mainly drifted diagonally over the players in the middle. <\/p>\n
It looked as though Jonathan Tah had finally headed them in front from a corner just before half-time of extra-time, but VAR was feeling interventionist, and disallowed the goal for a mild push on goalkeeper Orlando Gill by Waldemar Anton. <\/p>\n
Germany were sleepwalking towards penalties, Paraguay were already there. On the near sideline the benches cursed and screamed at each other while players on the pitch passed the time with fouls. At the whistle the Paraguay bench celebrated wildly. <\/p>\n
At least the penalty shoot-out was a classic. Germany had never lost a shoot-out in the World Cup before, but Gill saved the first from Havertz, and then the fourth from Nick Woltemade. Paraguay now had two chances to win it \u2212 and, unbelievably, missed both, while Nadiem Amiri kept Germany in it by slotting their fifth. <\/p>\n
Germany celebrated and sent forth Tah to take their sixth \u2212 but he skied it over the bar. The rugged centre-back Jose Canale was entrusted with Paraguay\u2019s third match-point, and this time he stuck it the right side of the crossbar. Paraguay celebrated, Germany\u2019s World Cup is over, and maybe in the end both sides got what they wanted. <\/p>\n
GERMANYPARAGUAYHavertzXOMauricioKimmichOOG\u00f3mezMusialaOOGalarzaWoltemadeXXSanabriaAmiriOXBalbuenaTahXOCanaleGERMANY34PARAGUAY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup second round: Germany 1 Paraguay 1 (Paraguay win 4-3 on penalties) How badly did Germany really…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2956,292,61,60,212653,112,4018],"class_list":["post-525184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-fifa","tag-germany","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-paraguay","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}