World Cup Story Feed
World Cup Story Feed
On June 29, in the penalty shootout in Boston, Havertz's shot was saved by Paraguayan goalkeeper Orlando Gill, and Jonathan Tah kicked the ball directly into the stands. Germany was eliminated 3 4.
On June 29, in the penalty shootout in Boston, Havertz's shot was saved by Paraguayan goalkeeper Orlando Gill, and Jonathan Tah kicked the ball directly into the stands. Germany lost 3-4 and was eliminated.
Eliminated in the group stage in Russia in 2018, overturned by Japan in Qatar in 2022, and now a penalty shootout collapse in Boston in 2026. The four-time champion has failed to reach the round of 16 for three consecutive World Cups, and the 11-match winning streak they had piled up across all competitions turned out to be as useless as scrap paper once the real tournament began.
Two weeks earlier, the script was not written this way. On June 14 in Houston, Germany crushed Curaçao 7-1, with Felix Nmecha opening the scoring in the 6th minute, leaving the opponent no room to breathe for the entire match. Eleven days later, they moved to New Jersey, where Sané scored a flash goal in the 2nd minute, but Ecuador's Angulo equalized in the 9th minute, and Plata sealed the game with a strike in the 77th minute. The 11-match winning streak shattered on the North American summer grass. After the match, Plata told the truth: "From the first minute, if we couldn't score, we had to endure until the last minute." Those words seemed to praise his team's resilience, but the subtext was harsh: the German logic of accumulating winning streaks against weaker opponents simply couldn't hold up on World Cup turf.
That same evening in Philadelphia, Ivory Coast sent Curaçao home with a 2-0 victory, with Nicolas Pépé scoring a brace. This was their fourth World Cup appearance, and the first time they advanced past the group stage. In 2006, 2010, and 2014, they crashed out in the group phase all three times—the World Cup memories of Didier Drogba's generation were all about packing their bags for the flight home. With an unbeaten record of 8 wins and 2 draws in qualifying and 15 different goal scorers, Africa's most balanced offensive firepower finally paid off in Philadelphia. Head coach Faé said gently after the match: "African football is progressing; it needs to believe in itself." Did that Ivory Coast team from 2006 to 2014 not believe in themselves? They did, but it didn't help. Pépé, with his two goals, crossed the river that his predecessors couldn't cross in twelve years.
24 hours later in Monterrey, Cody Gakpo opened the scoring, but Morocco's Ismael Diop equalized with a header in the 91st minute. In the penalty shootout, Kluivert, Quinten Timber, and Summerville all missed their spot kicks. Morocco prevailed 3-2, advancing to the round of 16 for the second consecutive World Cup, setting a team record. Within 48 hours, two European powerhouses were undone by the same script: Germany fell to South American counterattacks, and the Netherlands lost to North Africa's late equalizer and penalty shootout roulette. Expanding the World Cup to 48 teams and adding a new round of 32 indeed created an opening for smaller nations, but once the opening was made, you had to have the grit to slip through. Germany and the Netherlands both got stuck at the doorway.
England's Graham Potter, on the other hand, found a way to thrive with Sweden. Appointed only in October 2025, he had been driven to a nervous breakdown by the locker rooms at Chelsea and West Ham. Now, with Sweden, he guided them through the group stage with erratic results of 5-1, 1-5, and 1-1, scraping through to third place and qualification with just 4 points. In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, he said: "When I work, I feel quite Swedish, and I look quite Swedish too." Translation: a coach who couldn't manage big-name stars at elite clubs and was savaged by the media finally found that national team players were obedient and the system was simpler—his tactical board no longer needed to clean up after star players.
The business of broadcasting was plotted even more meticulously than the action on the pitch. British viewers watched Germany's tragic fall from 7-1 to penalty shootout elimination on free-to-air channels: BBC and ITV split coverage of the 104-match World Cup, with BBC taking 54 matches and ITV the rest. Both were completely free, available across BBC One, ITV1, iPlayer, and ITVX. German fans didn't enjoy that luxury—ARD and ZDF only broadcast some matches for free; to watch all 104, one had to pay for Deutsche Telekom's MagentaTV subscription. By the round of 32, France vs. Sweden was broadcast for free on M6, while host nation Mexico vs. Ecuador was exclusive to the pay channel beIN Sports. The matches were the same, but who got to watch which one had already been priced out.