Germany arrived at MetLife Stadium having already topped Group E. Ecuador arrived needing a win or an early flight home. That much was clear before kickoff. What followed was less predictable.
It was only the second time in five World Cup appearances that Ecuador have reached the knockout rounds. The first was 2006. The three tournaments in between — 2002, 2014, 2022 — all ended in the group stage. This one nearly did too.
The loss to Ivory Coast was a gut punch. Curacao was the one that truly stung. Fifteen attempts on goal, each denied by Eloy Room. No team had registered that many shots without scoring at a World Cup since 1966. They went into the Germany game having spent 242 minutes at this tournament without a goal.
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Then Florian Wirtz found Leroy Sane in the box two minutes in. Sane’s left foot, misfiring for much of this tournament, found its mark. His first World Cup goal. Manuel Neuer, 40, who had come out of international retirement for one last tournament, had his clean sheet. What the referee missed, and VAR chose not to act on, was Pavlovic catching Pedro Vite on the head in the build-up.
Sebastian Beccacece has built Ecuador as a defensive unit first. Fourteen goals in eighteen qualifiers tells the story. They finished second in CONMEBOL behind Argentina on the strength of five conceded across the entire campaign. The attack had been the anxiety throughout this tournament. The midfield never was.
Seven minutes after Germany scored, Vite recovered the ball deep in the German half and found Nilson Angulo on the left. Angulo’s shot went between Pavlovic’s legs, the same man who had escaped punishment minutes earlier, and past Neuer from twenty yards. Ecuador’s first goal of the tournament. The 242 minutes were done.
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Ecuador’s Gonzalo Plata (19) celebrates his go-ahead goal during the World Cup match against Germany. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Germany kept the ball without threatening. Their press had loosened the moment Sane scored, a team that knew it had already qualified playing accordingly. Kai Havertz headed straight at the goalkeeper from a David Raum cross. Jamal Musiala was denied by a Joel Ordóñez block. Havertz thought he had won a penalty early in the second half, only for VAR to rule it out after Sane was found to have fouled Vite in the build-up. Pavlovic’s afternoon in a sentence.
Pedro Vite and Moisés Caicedo ran the German midfield ragged. Vite finished with nine tackles, the most by any Ecuadorian in a World Cup match on record, joint-most by any player at this tournament. Caicedo completed 56 of 63 passes, created one big chance and made four tackles of his own. Between them they suffocated a midfield that on paper had no business being suffocated. Neither will be in most headlines tomorrow.
Germany’s defensive problems are not new. Klose, Lahm, Beckenbauer — that generation is long gone. What remains is Neuer at 40, Rudiger managing his body through a punishing season at Real Madrid, and a back line that the attack is permanently asked to outscore. Nine consecutive World Cup games without a clean sheet, equalling their longest such run, back to the 1930s. The 38-year-old Nagelsmann is the youngest manager at this tournament. Germany’s problems are older than him.
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With thirteen minutes left Enner Valencia came off. The 36-year-old, Ecuador’s all-time leading scorer and record World Cup appearance maker for his country, had tested Neuer once with a long-range drive and given what he had. Kevin Rodriguez came on. Fourteen minutes later he glanced on a corner and Gonzalo Plata poked it past Neuer.
What followed was a siege. Germany came in waves. Willian Pacho, Joel Ordóñez and Piero Hincapié — three of the composure young defenders at this tournament — blocked, headed and cleared everything that came at them. Ecuador held. Their first win over a UEFA side since 2013.
In the stands, the fans who had been crying into their flags wept again. Beccacece, asked afterward about the journey, said: “For as long as we are still alive, we need to seek the light. If we can’t find the light, we will deal with that sorrow, that pain when you don’t achieve what you dreamt of.”
They found it.