Germany — Côte d'Ivoire

Here is the thing about this game at BMO Field, Toronto: for sixty minutes, Germany looked like a side that had forgotten how to finish. Remember that. We'll come back to it. Group E, and the Mannschaft arrived as heavy favourites against Côte d'Ivoire. The xG told a familiar story — 1.89 to 1.22, Germany the dominant force on paper. And yet, at the half-hour mark, it was Franck Kessié who broke the silence. A captain's goal, the kind of moment that defines why Côte d'Ivoire always deserves more respect than they receive. The Ivorians sat compact, pressed with intelligence, and when they won the ball in transition, they were clinical. Germany? Three big chances missed in the first half alone. Three. You don't survive that at a World Cup. Or so we thought. Germany's first half was technically solid — 61% possession, 89% pass accuracy — but criminally wasteful in the final third. Too slow in the box, too predictable. Havertz and Musiala couldn't unlock a resolute Ivorian backline. Nagelsmann read it right: at sixty minutes, three changes at once — Undav, Leweling, Amiri all on. Bold. Decisive. Necessary. Côte d'Ivoire didn't simply defend. They pressed, they believed, they created. But Yahia Fofana — the best player on the pitch, rated 8.24 — could only do so much alone. The Ivorians missed one of their two big chances, and that proved fatal. When you hold a lead against a team with superior xG, you must be perfect in your moments. They weren't. Deniz Undav changed everything. 68 minutes — a goal. 90 minutes — another. A brace from a substitute, the man brought on precisely because the starters couldn't find the net. His movement, his composure, his timing delivered Germany a 2-1 win that the xG broadly supports — though those three missed big chances in the first half nearly rewrote the story entirely. So here's the debate: Was Nagelsmann too slow with those triple substitutions — should he have acted earlier and spared Germany twenty minutes of suffering? And was Côte d'Ivoire naive to keep pushing after conceding the equalizer? Fight it out below — on FootLegion, your team's goals live forever, whatever the scoreboard says.