When FIFA bolted an extra knockout round onto this World Cup, the complaint wrote itself. Thirty-two teams advancing from forty-eight? A safety net for the big boys. A week of processions before the real tournament starts.
Forty-eight hours into the round of 32, two of European football’s royal houses were packing. Nobody is calling it padding any more.
Foxborough, Monday night
Germany had cruised through their group — a 7–1 demolition of Curaçao along the way — and a meaningless final-day defeat to Ecuador looked like a footnote. Then Julio Enciso put Paraguay ahead in the 42nd minute at Gillette Stadium, and the footnote started to look like foreshadowing. Kai Havertz levelled after the break. Extra time came and went, tight as a held breath. Penalties.
Paraguay 4, Germany 3. A four-time champion, out before the round of 16 for the third World Cup running — a sentence German football will spend years trying to explain. Paraguay, in their first World Cup since 2010, march on to face France in Philadelphia.
Monterrey went louder
A day later, in Guadalupe, the Netherlands were minutes from safe passage when Cody Gakpo’s 72nd-minute goal was cancelled out in stoppage time by Ismael Diop. Extra time. Penalties. And Morocco — the team that walked to the 2022 semi-finals over the bodies of Belgium, Spain and Portugal — did what Morocco now simply do. They won the shootout 3–2, and half of Monterrey seemed to be celebrating with them.
Once is a fairytale. Twice is a habit. Morocco against European giants in knockout rounds is becoming one of football’s least fair fights, and Canada await them next with due nervousness.
The heavyweights that survived — barely
Elsewhere the big names lived, but few lived comfortably. Japan led Brazil through Kaishū Sano’s strike until Casemiro equalised and Gabriel Martinelli broke Japanese hearts five minutes into stoppage time. Belgium needed Youri Tielemans deep in extra-time stoppage — the 125th minute, you read that right — to put away a magnificent Senegal 3–2. Erling Haaland’s 86th-minute winner carried Norway past Ivory Coast and into a mouth-watering date with Brazil at MetLife.
Only France made it look easy. Kylian Mbappé scored twice and Bradley Barcola added another in a 3–0 stroll past Sweden that had the rest of the bracket taking notes, nervously.
The verdict on the new round
Here is the thing about giving smaller nations one more knockout match: they tend to use it. The round of 32 was supposed to be a formality. Instead it produced two penalty-shootout assassinations, a stoppage-time escape for Brazil, and a 125th-minute winner. The tournament’s new floor turned out to be a trapdoor.
And the round of 16 has not even started. Sunday brings Brazil against Haaland, and England at the Azteca. Sleep while you can.