CHICKENPIE.Leroy Sané scored in the second minute. He should not have. Aleksandar Pavlovic caught Pedro Vite in the head with a high boot on the edge of the box; the referee let play continue; Florian Wirtz slipped a pass into the area; Sané swept a first-time shot past Hernán Galíndez with the calm of a man who has done this a thousand times. Germany were ahead. Ecuador were furious. The mostly-Ecuadorian crowd at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Thursday night — the night that decided Group E — could see what the replay confirmed. The goal stood. The game did not wait for them to agree.
Seven minutes later, Nilson Angulo took a touch on the edge of the German box, opened his hips, and drilled a low, driving shot past Manuel Neuer from twenty yards. The Sunderland winger — twenty-three years old, on loan from Brighton, making his first World Cup start — had been told by his manager to take the shot when it came. It came. The angle was tight. Angulo hit it anyway. Neuer got a hand to it. The hand was not enough. Ecuador were level. MetLife, which is mostly a soccer-neutral building holding a New York Giants-shaped identity, was suddenly the loudest building in North America.
Germany had the better chances for the next hour. Kai Havertz headed one straight at Galíndez. A penalty was awarded to Germany at halftime, then overturned by VAR after a foul in the build-up — Sané on Vite, the same way the German opener had gone. Julian Nagelsmann threw on Deniz Undav, the super-sub with three goals already at this tournament. Undav could not find the goal. Ecuador kept their shape. The Ecuador bench started to believe.
This team does not stop believing. That is why we are here. — Sebastián Beccacece, Ecuador head coach
In the seventy-seventh minute, Gonzalo Plata received the ball on the right side of the penalty area, took a touch, took another, and prodded it past Neuer from close range. The Qatar-based winger — twenty-five years old, raised in Guayaquil, on the books at Vasco da Gama — did not celebrate wildly. He ran toward the Ecuador bench with his arms out. The bench stood up. The crowd stood up. MetLife, which had been mostly quiet for two hours, was shaking. Ecuador had come from behind to beat the four-time World Cup winners, the team that had already topped Group E, the team that had won the thing in 2014.
Germany still advances. Nagelsmann's side finishes first in Group E and travels to Foxborough on Monday for their first knockout match since lifting the trophy in Brazil twelve years ago. But the goal difference shift drops them from a top seed to a softer side of the bracket, and the psychological read is uglier than the table. A team that had not lost a group game in forty-one years has now lost two of three. Ecuador, meanwhile, advance as one of the eight best third-placed teams. Sebastián Beccacece, the Argentine manager who took the job two years ago and was widely written off after Ecuador took one point from their first two games, has just kept the South American nation in the tournament.
Plata is twenty-five. Angulo is twenty-three. Moisés Caicedo, who set up the winner, is twenty-four. Piero Hincapié is twenty-four. Ecuador have a spine that will be at this tournament for years. Thursday night in East Rutherford, they showed what that spine can do when it believes. Germany will still be Germany in the knockouts. So will Brazil. So will France. But Ecuador have arrived. The round of 32 begins Tuesday. La Tri is in it.
Daily Art Caricature by Chickenpie — World Cup 2026.
