The Round of 32 at the World Cup is set. With a week between games, that means a lot of watching for Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The July 4 Round of 16 game will bring to Lincoln Financial Field the winner of Germany and Paraguay against the winner of France and Sweden.<\/p>\n
Germany-Paraguay is Monday in Foxborough, Mass. France and Sweden will play Tuesday in East Rutherford, N.J.<\/p>\n
Since the draw in December, the collision course was Germany and France, with the Group E winner and Group I winner the chalk selections for Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Germany, the only member of Group E not to have played in Philadelphia, held up its end of the bargain. Wins over Curacao and Ivory Coast meant it had clinched Group E before a 2-1 loss to Ecuador in East Rutherford.<\/p>\n
The Germans will be a prohibitive favorite against Paraguay, which finished third in the United States\u2019 Group D.<\/p>\n
La Albirroja recovered from a 4-1 pasting by the U.S. in the opener to score a 1-0 win over Turkey on a second-minute goal by Atlanta United\u2019s Matias Galarza, then worked a joyless draw against Australia in a game where both teams knew it would be enough to advance.<\/p>\n
Paraguay finished seventh of 12 third-place teams, getting through on four points and a minus-2 goal differential.<\/p>\n
Germany is ranked 12th in the latest FIFA World Rankings, with Paraguay 37th.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first time Germany has emerged from its group at a World Cup since 2014, when it won the tournament. The four-time champion had made the quarterfinals at each of its previous 16 World Cups dating to 1954, with 12 semifinal appearances and eight finals berths.<\/p>\n
France has already made its way through Philadelphia, defeating Iraq, 3-0, in the June 22 rain-delayed match, the first \u2014 and still only one \u2014 in World Cup history. France won all three matches in the group, handling Senegal, 3-1, and Norway, 4-1. Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele have four goals each, Dembele off a hat trick against Norway.<\/p>\n
Sweden finished third in Group F. It isn\u2019t boring, having scored seven times and allowed seven goals. It rampaged past a doormat of a Tunisia side, 5-1, in its opener, then got run over, 5-1, by Netherlands. A 1-1 draw with Japan was sedate, knowing both would get through with that result.<\/p>\n
France, the 2018 champion, is ranked second by FIFA, behind only the team to which it lost in the 2022 final, Argentina. Sweden is 36th.<\/p>\n
The Round of 16 clash at 5 p.m. on July 4 is the sixth and final game to be held at what FIFA is calling Philadelphia Stadium. Four of the first five have been sellouts of the 68,324-seat capacity.<\/p>\n
By FIFA\u2019s reported attendances, Philadelphia has filled 99.985 percent of its possible seats. That ranks third-best among 16 venues, trailing only 100 percent records from Vancouver and Mexico City, which hosted only three games, two involving the Mexican national team.<\/p>\n
No venue has been less than 99 percent full, and no single game has had a capacity lower than 97.34 percent of reported capacity: Saudi Arabia vs. Uruguay in Miami on June 15.<\/p>\n
Six of the nine teams that played games in Philadelphia in the group stage \u2014 France, Croatia, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, Ghana, Brazil \u2014 advanced to the Round of 32.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Round of 32 at the World Cup is set. With a week between games, that means a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,11868,726,210,2237],"class_list":["post-230554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-dtd","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}