I’ve watched Jonathan Tah’s penalty sail over the bar four times now and it doesn’t get less absurd. Tah — one of the best defenders in the world — steps up needing to keep his country’s World Cup alive, and the ball goes into the third row. Not wide. Not saved. Over. Like he just tried to kick it into the sun.
That was June 29. Paraguay 1, Germany 1. Paraguay wins 4-3 on penalties. Germany — four-time world champions, ranked 10th by FIFA, a country that basically invented the concept of efficient tournament soccer — is going home. Eliminated by a team ranked 41st in the world.
https://twitter.com/espn/status/2071737620208496799
The sequence that got them there is unreal. Goalkeeper Orlando Gill saved two German penalties — Havertz and Woltemade, back to back — before Tah’s balloon ride finished it. And before that, a Jonathan Tah goal got wiped out by VAR in the 119th minute for a foul on the keeper. Controversial? Sure. But Germany still needed to convert in the shootout and couldn’t. Gustavo Gomez, the 33-year-old captain, 88 caps deep, stepped up and buried his. Then Canale scored the decider. Paraguay’s bench became a pile of bodies.
Before the match, German commentator Jonas Friedrich called Paraguay “a third-class team” and described the game as “a domestic cup game.” You already know where this is going.
https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/2071910282348175413
Now, I know the counterargument. The 48-team World Cup created weaker group stages, softer paths, and Paraguay caught Germany on a bad night after a VAR call that changed the momentum of the whole match. Valid. I’ve heard it. People have been arguing about whether the expanded tournament was too big since the bracket dropped. But that argument assumes these moments are accidents. They’re not. A team with nothing to lose, playing against a giant that doesn’t fully respect them, in a tournament with a little more breathing room — that’s not a fluke. That’s a recipe. And Paraguay followed it perfectly. Gill’s double save wasn’t lucky. The way they defended for 120 minutes, absorbing everything Germany threw, never cracking — that’s a team that believed.
My grandmother is 78 years old and she will explain to you at length why Napoli’s defensive structure in the 2022-23 season was historically underrated. She doesn’t watch club soccer for results. She watches it to understand character. She would have watched this Paraguay team and nodded. “They played like they meant it,” she would say. That’s it. That’s the whole review.
Paraguay’s best World Cup run since 2010. Gomez said after the match: “I’m most impressed by our unity. We have incredible strength to face any situation.” Gill said: “This is for all the people of Paraguay.” These are not things you say when you got lucky.
France was supposed to be a safe bet to roll through a quarterfinal. Ranked 3rd in the world, they beat Sweden 3-0 in the round of 32 without breaking a sweat. And now they have to play a team that just knocked out Germany on the day before the Fourth of July, in Philadelphia, in front of a crowd that is going to lose its mind for the underdogs.
July 4. Tomorrow. Paraguay versus France.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know I’ll be watching it four more times, whatever it is.
