Paraguay stuns Germany in Foxborough thriller on penalties

Paraguay stuns – In a tense World Cup Round of 32 match at Foxborough, Paraguay overcame a 1-1 tie and a blown two-shot lead in a penalty shootout to upset four-time champion Germany. Head coach Gustavo Alfaro’s team survived brutal German set-piece pressure, then advanced to

FOXBOROUGH — The stadium felt like it had been braced for the inevitable: Germany’s pressure, Paraguay defending, the clock slipping into extra time. Then the match turned into something harsher than tactics—something that comes down to nerve.

After a 1-1 deadlock through 90 minutes, Paraguay weathered a wave of German attacks in the second half and beyond. German center-back Jonathan Tah had a would-be winner disallowed in the first period of extra time after a controversial video assistant referee (VAR) decision. With the score level. the game ultimately slid toward penalty kicks—the kind of moment that can erase everything a team has done right. or crown it.

Paraguay had already been through setbacks in this tournament. Its opening match ended in a 4-1 loss against the co-host U.S. a result that looked like it could end its run before it began. Still. against Germany on Monday’s Round of 32 stage. Paraguay endured—through defending spells that felt relentless and through a shootout that refused to let the advantage stay still.

The head coach, Gustavo Alfaro, spoke for nearly 50 minutes in a postgame press conference. The 63-year-old Argentine. who took over coaching the Paraguayan national team in 2024—“against the advice of his friends. ” he freely admitted—kept returning to the same themes: humility. patience. and the willingness to suffer for the result.

“We can have thousands of defects, but we have a heart that never gives up,” he said during the marathon session.

His players’ survival and his insistence on adaptability were woven into how Paraguay reached this moment. Extra time arrived after a fairly mundane first half and what was described as a perfectly average second half. but the final stretch belonged to Germany and its set-piece pressure. Still, Paraguay kept going, pushing back when it could and hanging on until the match demanded something different.

Once the shootout began, it provided its own twisting timeline. Germany fell behind after saves from Orlando Gill on Kai Havertz and Nick Woltemade. For a brief moment, Paraguay appeared to be steering the ending.

Then the balance shifted. Germany’s legendary goalkeeper Manuel Neuer—having come out of international retirement for this tournament—reached back for one last time to bring his team level.

But Paraguay wasn’t done with its own risks. Antonio Sanabria missed his penalty entirely, and Neuer responded with a fingertip save—extending his 6-foot-4 frame—to deny Fabián Balbuena.

Germany had the kind of opportunity that doesn’t show up often: it could finally seize the win and turn the drama into resolution. Instead, it squandered it.

Tah. who had already been denied earlier after his goal was disallowed. completed a sour day by skying his penalty kick over the goal. The miss traveled upward “somewhere in the vague direction of Wrentham. ” and it was the third German penalty miss of the day. Prior to Monday, Germany had missed only one penalty in a shootout in its World Cup history.

With the advantage finally in hand, center-back José Canale delivered the deciding kick for Paraguay—calmly wrong-footing Neuer and sending his penalty into the open net.

Alfaro had understood that the path to an upset could be circuitous.

“The thing is, it’s our nature,” he said of the up-and-down drama. “If we don’t suffer, it’s useless.”

For the Paraguayan team, the suffering came mostly without the ball for the majority of the 120 minutes. It came in the way Germany pressed and in how Paraguay absorbed it. When the moment arrived. it came down to technique and timing—“perfect technique” and “ice water in his veins. ” as the match’s ending made clear.

Almost immediately after the final whistle, Paraguayan president Santiago Pena posted an all-caps message to the nation: “PARAGUAY NEVER GIVES UP! IT’S A HOLIDAY, DAMMIT!” He followed it with a “¡PARAGUAY NUNCA SE RINDE! ¡¡FERIADO CARAJO!!” post that carried the date June 29, 2026.

Alfaro tied the significance directly to what soccer can do to a country in a single evening.

“It’s really difficult to get a national holiday, so I say the power of football is wonderful,” he said. “That’s why people should enjoy it, all of Paraguay should enjoy it.”

The victory is now set to echo far beyond the match. Alfaro described it as the greatest win of his coaching career.

“For me, without a doubt, it was the greatest victory of my coaching career,” he said. He spoke about telling the players, “Thank you, thank you for giving me an unforgettable day,” and said he stood staring at the field, overwhelmed by what he could feel in the stadium atmosphere.

He added, “I hope we have others.”

Paraguay’s next step is already locked in: it will advance to the Round of 16, where it will face the winner of Sweden-France.

For Foxborough, the win carries a long-awaited kind of payoff. The region has hosted high-profile international soccer games for decades. but it had been searching for an American-stage World Cup moment with genuine. gut-punch drama. Even going back to 1994—when Italy beat Nigeria in extra time. the only other local World Cup game to require it—this level of tension hadn’t arrived.

Now it has.

On Monday, the stakes were clear from the start. Germany arrived as the four-time champion and a historical powerhouse. Paraguay arrived with only one knockout round win in its World Cup history.

Alfaro framed that gap in the language of origin and sacrifice.

“With all due respect, [the Germans] are trained in top-level academies in Europe. We have come from the red earth,” he said. “The jersey we wear has the stripes of red soil, playing barefoot on that land with the sacrifices of the parents to try to get the kids to train.”

He followed it with a question that sounded less like a speech and more like a promise.

“If we’re all parents, who wouldn’t want their kids to fulfill a dream?”

With that victory, Paraguay has written itself—and Foxborough—into the World Cup record book. Alfaro summed up the night in a way that sounded like closure.

“Twenty six players went on the pitch,” he said. “and when they left, they were legends.”

Paraguay vs Germany World Cup 2026 Foxborough penalty shootout Gustavo Alfaro Santiago Peña Manuel Neuer Jonathan Tah Orlando Gill José Canale