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Art & illustrations

Germany Came Back. Toronto Made Sure You Heard It.

Halftime in Toronto: Ivory Coast up 1-0, Germany staring at elimination. Then Undav rescued the tournament and BMO Field erupted as Nagelsmann's side clinched the knockout round.

1 min readChickenpie
Behind the artwork ↓
Chickenpie illustration: BMO Field in Toronto at twilight, German fans waving black-red-gold flags after a comeback. A tiny footballer in white kit celebrates at center pitch, scoreboard reads GER 2 - 1 CIV. CN Tower visible behind the stadium. Mr. Chicken in a tiny black-red-gold scarf and Lederhosen cheers from the lower-left corner.
FROM THE SKETCHBOOK
BEHIND THE ARTWORK
At a glance
CategoryArt & illustrations
PublishedJun 21, 2026
Read time1 min
Covered here
  • Sports
  • World Cup

Halftime at BMO Field. Ivory Coast 1, Germany 0. The co-host crowd in Toronto had spent the first 45 minutes watching the underdog story write itself — and the German bench staring at the kind of math that ends tournaments before they start. Julian Nagelsmann walked into the tunnel with the expression of a man recalculating everything.

Then the second half started. And the version of Germany people had been waiting for finally showed up. The pressure built. The Ivory Coast goal shrunk. And then Deniz Undav did what rescue-act strikers do — he found the net, twice if you count the assist, and once if you count the moment the whole stadium exhaled.

Final: 2-1 Germany. Knockout round booked. Toronto — a co-host city that hadn't seen Germany play in person at a World Cup in decades — got the version of the comeback that turns a stadium into a memory. Nagelsmann afterward: "We deserved it." The way he said it made clear he meant more than the three points.

Toronto didn't just host a Germany game. Toronto hosted the Germany game Germany needed to play.

Daily Art Caricature by Chickenpie — World Cup 2026

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