Germany, which won the World Cup in 1954, 1970, 1990 and 2014, has not reached the final 16 since winning the World Cup in Brazil. In 2018, the defending champs exited after losing group stage matches to Mexico and South Korea. In 2022, they went home after losing to Japan and drawing with Spain.
Hopes were higher at World Cup 2026. They beat Curacao and Ivory Coast to win their group, thanks to goals by substitute Denis Undav.
But then they lost to Ecuador. In the Round of 32, they lost on penalties to Paraguay, who finished third in Group D behind USA and Australia, and who entered the tournament ranked 41 in the world, far below 10th-ranked Germany.
German fans, media and former players immediately criticized federation officials, coaches, players and even their family members.
Der Spiegel posted an opinion piece calling it “the decline of a once great football nation”, and said the loss reflected the overall demise of Germany and its economy.
“For the third time in a row, the German national team has been eliminated early from a World Cup tournament, with its third coach,” wrote the columnist Peter Ahrens. “This can no longer be explained by bad luck or chance. It reflects a fundamental problem. And that problem is devastating. Germany, once a great footballing nation, four-time world champion, has shrunk to a footballing minnow. The elimination against Paraguay, as embarrassing as it seems, is actually the new reality for Germany.”
The tabloid Bild gave Germany’s coach Julian Nagelsmann a grade of “F” for “slow, boring and lethargic” play.
Many also criticized German chancellor Friedrich Merz for stating that: “Even though being eliminated hurts: What a game!”. Merz also added: “With your dedication and team spirit at this World Cup, you have inspired our country. We are proud of you.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s confidant Kirill Dmitriev poked fun at Merz, writing on X: “Merz is good at always encouraging a failure.”
The German daily TAZ accused German players of being too anxious to score in the penalty shoot out. “The players’ fear of failure was written all over their faces.” It claimed that Jonathan Tah had been forced to take the first penalty of his career because other players hesitated to step up and take the final shot of the game.
“There weren’t enough professionals willing to confidently step up to the penalty spot,” said Bild. “It became clear the extent to which the team lacked that absolute winning mentality”.
Former German midfielder and captain Lothar Matthäus, the called for Julain Nagelsmann, age 38, to resign as coach. “You have to have a new trainer in order to move on.”
Nagelsmann said he will not be resigning. “I am not someone who runs away. This is not the first time this has happened, and there are some things about today that need to be changed. But if the (German Federation) DFB wants me to continue I am going to continue. I know the mechanics of football, I know how the industry works. I know a lot of people will want me to leave but I would love to continue if the football association wants me to.”
Nagelsmann said his federation bosses spoke to him after the match. “They have talked to me gently, they comforted me. They’re not going to offer me an extension of my contract two minutes after I lost this match. They are not going to talk just after the defeat.”
Jürgen Klopp, former trainer of Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, said he was not yet ready to apply for Nagelsmann’s job.
In Nagelsmann’s previous tournament at the helm of Germany, they gained only one knock-out stage victory, over Denmark.
“If we did a survey today in Germany people would not speak positively about me today. But in football you win some and you lose some, it’s always been that way, we haven’t really done much in this tournament to make people celebrate, but I have a lot of confidence that we could have done a better job.”
“But I don’t think that everyone in Germany will agree with me staying on as manager of the Mannschaft. It was very difficult because they were ultra-defensive.”
“We didn’t give enough. When you exit the World Cup after you play Paraguay, then it is very bitter. If you do not score many goals then it is not enough. It is very hurtful.”
Matthäus, who led Germany to the World Cup title in 1990, said the current situation reminded him of Germany’s loss to Bulgaria in the quarters at World Cup 1994 in USA.
He said German players were distracted by parents and families in 1994 and 2026. “While there’s a lot that needs to be processed about what happened on the pitch, what happened off the pitch also needs to be a topic of discussion,” Matthäus said. “There were documentaries about this topic in ‘94. I don’t think it was that different this time round,” Matthäus told German tabloid Bild. He said having their families with them was “more important for many of [the players] than what took place on the football pitch”.
“I really don’t know why they should be there, especially for the first, second and third games”, he said. “They hadn’t even been in America for two weeks and already their entire families were with them. They could have been flown in for the quarter-finals when the team had actually accomplished something.”
He said some players had spent a lot of their time arranging flights and hotels. “This was a topic of discussion in the team. It’s not appeared in the media … but I know that it was a topic of discussion and that one player was cross with another because he was allowed to bring his mum with him. Another was allowed to bring his wife, then the kids were allowed to fly too.”
While some flew on the team’s plane, others took commercial flights. This caused unrest in the dressing room, he claimed. “The focus was simply not on the World Cup but on this free day to spend with the family and that free day with the family”.
Matthäus called the defeat to Paraguay “just too much to bear”. “We didn’t advance, we didn’t deserve to advance, however sad it is to say that,” he said.
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