Germany thought they had won it. In the 78th minute of a tense last-32 tie in Kansas City, Florian Wirtz swept the ball into the Paraguay net to make it 2-1, sending the German bench sprinting down the touchline. Then the screen flickered. After a four-minute VAR review, referee Facundo Tello chalked the goal off for a marginal offside in the build-up — Niclas Füllkrug’s heel, by the broadcast lines, no more than a boot-length ahead. The game finished 1-1. Paraguay won the shootout 4-2. And a chorus of the game’s most respected voices has lined up to call the decision exactly what it looked like.
‘A joke’ — the verdict on the call
Alan Shearer did not reach for nuance. “It’s a joke, and it’s terrible,” the BBC’s lead pundit said. “You’re talking about a margin you cannot see with the naked eye, on a phase of play three passes before the goal. If VAR is being used to rule out goals like that, it’s not helping the game — it’s strangling it.”
Jürgen Klopp, working as a guest analyst, was equally blunt. “Germany scored a perfectly good goal,” he said. “The defender plays Füllkrug onside — it’s only the angle of the camera that makes it look close. To wait four minutes and then disallow it, that’s a decision that decides a World Cup match on a technicality nobody in the stadium could see.”
Pat Nevin pointed to the human cost. “You can construct the technical case for the offside, fine,” he said. “But football is a game of momentum, and that review killed Germany stone dead. They never recovered. You could see it in their faces before the first penalty was even struck.”
The most damning assessment came from Darren Cann, the former World Cup assistant referee. “The lines drawn were not reliable enough to overturn the on-field call,” Cann said. “When the margin is that fine, the protocol is to stay with the referee’s original decision. This was not clear and obvious. It should never have been overturned.”
How a tournament unravelled in four minutes
The disallowed goal turns a familiar German story into a bitter one. Julian Nagelsmann’s side had recovered from going behind to Antonio Sanabria’s early header, equalising through Jamal Musiala before the interval. Wirtz’s strike was the moment the match tilted — until it wasn’t. From the restart, Germany lost their grip. Paraguay, organised and ferocious in the Diego Gómez midfield, held firm through extra time and trusted their goalkeeper.
Roberto Fernández duly delivered, saving from Wirtz and Joshua Kimmich to complete the first World Cup shootout Germany have ever lost. The four-time champions, previously perfect from the spot at the finals — winners in 1982, 1986, 1990 and 2006 — have now gone out at the last-32 or group stage in three of the last four tournaments. For a nation that built its identity on knockout-round ruthlessness, the pattern is becoming impossible to wave away.
- Germany’s first-ever World Cup penalty shootout defeat
- Wirtz’s 78th-minute goal disallowed after a four-minute VAR review
- Paraguay reach the last 16 for the first time since 2010
- Roberto Fernández saved two of Germany’s four spot-kicks
What it means going forward
The immediate fallout lands on Nagelsmann, whose tenure was supposed to restore German tournament credibility, not extend the decline. The DFB will resist a knee-jerk dismissal, but a third early exit in four cycles invites hard questions about squad depth, big-moment composure and whether the structural problems run deeper than any one coach.
The louder conversation, though, is about VAR itself. FIFA introduced semi-automated offside technology to make these calls faster and less contentious; on Saturday it produced a four-minute delay and a result no neutral can comfortably defend. Expect renewed pressure for a “daylight” threshold — a tolerance that would have let Wirtz’s goal stand — to return to the agenda before the tournament is out.
For Paraguay, none of that matters. Gustavo Alfaro’s team have a last-16 tie to prepare for and a country behind them. Germany, meanwhile, fly home to an inquest that will dwell less on penalties than on the goal that was taken away — and the four minutes that decided their World Cup.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
339 articles published
