Jun 26, 2026
AP Photo Netherlands’ Brian Brobbey (19) celebrates their second goal with Virgil van Dijk (4) and teammates during the World Cup Group F match between Tunisia and the Netherlands in Kansas City, Mo. on Thursday.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Brian Brobbey scored his third goal of the World Cup, the Netherlands got a pair of goals that deflected off Tunisia into its own net, and the Dutch rolled in the rain to a 3-1 victory Thursday night to advance to the knockout stage as the winners of Group F.
The Netherlands began the day tied atop the group with Japan. But when the Samurai Blue could only manage a 1-1 draw with Sweden in Arlington, Texas, it left Virgil van Dijk and his teammates looking forward to a matchup with Group C runner-up Morocco on Monday — and Japan with the heavy task of playing powerhouse Brazil in the Round of 32.
Tunisia, which sacked its coach after a loss to open the World Cup, had already been eliminated from the tournament.
The opening minutes summed up the last couple of weeks for the Eagles of Carthage: Denzel Dumfries sent a ball across the front of the goal, Tunisian captain Ellys Skhiri slapped at with his foot in an attempt to clear, and he found the back of his own net instead.
Brobbey made it 2-0 in the seventh minute, after the Dutch had earned a free kick from about 25 yards. The 6-foot-5 van Dijk expertly headed it across the box, and Brobbey was in perfect position to chip the ball past Tunisian goalkeeper Aymen Dahmen.
AP Photo Ecuador’s Gonzalo Plata, center right, celebrates scoring his side’s second goal against Germany during the World Cup Group E soccer match in East Rutherford, N.J., near New York on Thursday.
Tunisia finally scored in the 54th minute, when Hazem Mastouri redirected a corner kick into the net, but the Netherlands answered in the 62nd, when Jan Paul van Hecke’s header off a corner glanced off Anis Slimane’s head and into his own net.
The Netherlands controlled the game from there as a first-half drizzle turned into a second-half downpour.
The threat of thunderstorms had persisted all the week, and lightning briefly delayed the completion of the “Oranje fanwalk” to the game. But once they were given the all-clear, the Dutch fans clad in their highlighter-orange shirts poured down the aisles and into Arrowhead Stadium, making it look like deer hunting season in the Midwest.
The Netherlands is certainly big-game hunting in this World Cup.
The nation of Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten has long held the moniker of best never to have won the tournament. Three times the Dutch have advanced to the finals and each time they have lost, most recently to Spain in extra time in 2010.
They got off to a lackluster start this go-round, too, tying Japan 2-2 in their opener. But with two goals apiece from Brobby and Cody Gakpo, the Netherlands routed Sweden 5-1, and it now has some momentum heading into the knockout stage.
Tunisia seemed quite content just to finish a disastrous World Cup.
The Eagles of Carthage opened with a 5-1 loss to Sweden, which led to coach Sabri Lamouchi’s firing. French coach Herve Renard took over amid reports of tension and infighting within the team, and little seemed to have changed in a 4-0 loss to Japan last week.
Thursday’s loss ran Tunisia’s winless streak to six matches.
JAPAN 1, SWEDEN 1
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Daizen Maeda gave Japan the lead and Anthony Elanga took it away six minutes later, helping Sweden to a 1-1 draw Thursday night that sent both teams to the knockout round of the World Cup.
Elanga’s impressive left-footed strike from just outside the right corner of the box in the 62nd minute was his second goal of this year’s tournament. Elanga has scored only three goals in 49 games for Newcastle, but zero in 32 Premier League matches.
Six minutes earlier, Maeda settled a nifty pass from Ritsu Doan with his left foot in the penalty area and easily beat Jacob Widell Zetterstrom with his right foot.
It was Japan’s seventh goal of the tournament, the country’s most for an entire World Cup. That topped the six the Japanese scored while reaching the round of 16 in Russia eight years ago.
Japan is advancing out of the group stage for the third consecutive World Cup and fifth time in seven tries since first reaching the round of 16 as co-hosts in 2002. The Japanese team finished second in Group F behind the Netherlands and will play Brazil in Houston on Monday.
The Swedes have advanced to the knockout round the past four times they’ve qualified for the World Cup going back to 1994 — when they reached the semifinals the last time the U.S. hosted soccer’s biggest event.
Elanga had another chance in injury time, with his right-footed attempted forcing goalkeeper Zion Suzuki to make a diving deflection.
On the ensuing corner kick, Suzuki deflected Alexander Isak’s header into the air and eventually ended the scoring chance with a leaping grab in a crowd of players.
ECUADOR 2, GERMANY 1
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — A little flick of Gonzalo Plata’s big toe helped Ecuador make a great escape.
Plata poked the ball past Manuel Neuer in the 77th minute and lifted Ecuador to a come-from-behind 2-1 win over Germany on Thursday and into the knockout round of the World Cup for the first time since 2006.
“Life is different now. We suffered a lot,” said Plata, a 25-year-old winger who scored his ninth international goal. “We suffered too much in the first two matches. We would have liked to secure qualification much earlier, but now we’re going forward more hungry, knowing we have to give it our all.”
Ecuador, which has lost only one of its last 22 games, finished third in Group E with four points and advanced past the group stage for the second time, headed to a possible matchup with Mexico on Tuesday in Mexico City.
A four-time champion already assured of advancement by winning its first two games, Germany will play its round of 32 game Monday at Foxborough, Massachusetts, most likely against Paraguay, Australia or Sweden.
“On Monday it’s important that we start well,” Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann said through a translator.
Germany’s winning streak was stopped at 11 games, one shy of the team record set in 1979-80.
“The difference was today that the opponent wanted to win more than us, and you could really feel it, especially in the second half,” Germany midfielder Joshua Kimmich said.
Germany went ahead on Leroy Sané’s second-minute goal. Aleksandar Pavlović chested the ball and ended up kicking Pedro Vite in the head following Nathaniel Brown’s throw-in, but American referee Tori Penso didn’t whistle a foul. Pavlović passed to Florian Wirtz, who centered to Sané just inside the penalty area to beat goalkeeper Hernán Galíndez.
Nilson Angulo equalized in the ninth minute with Ecuador’s first goal of the tournament following a 1-0 loss to Ivory Coast and a 0-0 draw with Curaçao. Felix Nmecha lost the ball in midfield to Vite. The midfielder passed to Angulo, who dribbled toward goal and beat Neuer to the far post from just outside the area.
Penso originally awarded Germany a penalty kick less than 30 seconds into the second half after Joel Ordóñez took down Kai Havertz, but a video review ruled Sané had first fouled Vite.
With the crowd tensing as time ran down, Plata scored after Vite’s corner kick was nodded on by Kevin Rodríguez, who was 6 yards out at the near post. Neuer, the 40-year-old Germany goalkeeper who ended two years of international retirement for the World Cup, was about to grasp the ball when Plata raised his left foot and stabbed it into the net.
Sebastián Beccacece, an Argentine who has coached Ecuador for two years, sprinted to the front of the stands, his shoulder-length blond hair flowing, to hug his wife, Patricia Persson. He had been pilloried after the poor start and paraphrased a lyric from Argentine rock band Los Redondos.
“In loneliness you cannot always listen to what you hear. You just keep pushing forward. You ignite your fire and you continue,” he said.
A crowd of 80,663 at MetLife Stadium was mostly in Ecuador’s yellow. FIFA said it boosted attendance to a record 3,587,539 in the 56th game of the expanded World Cup, one more than the 52 matches for the 1994 tournament in the U.S.
“We felt at home in all these stadiums,” Rodríguez said.
Ecuador had prepared to return to its training camp in Columbus, Ohio, rather than head home to South America.
“They told us: `You will be back here,’” he said. “The staff in the kitchen, in the spa, even the drivers.”
Ecuador isn’t sure of its next opponent or even where the match will be played, so fans can’t lock in travel just yet.
“I hope they brought plenty of clothes in their luggage,” Plata said.
IVORY COAST 2, CURACAO 0
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Ivory Coast rejoiced as players dropped to their knees on the pitch for a team photo — peerless in national team history — and they all pointed one finger toward the sky.
One, for the West African team’s first-ever trip to the World Cup knockout round.
Why stop there?
“We aren’t setting any limits for ourselves,” star forward Nicolas Pépé said. “I think we have huge potential.”
Les Éléphants have crashed the party and made it out of their group for the first time in four World Cup appearances. Pépé scored in each half and Ivory Coast advanced with a 2-0 victory over Curaçao on Thursday.
Players stripped off their jerseys and danced and partied in the locker room for the well-earned and overdue celebration.
Ivory Coast beat Ecuador 1-0 in its tournament opener — at the same Philadelphia stadium as Thursday’s game — and lost to Germany in its Group E second game.
Ivory Coast will play June 30 against either France or Norway — whichever is the runner-up in Group I.
“If we aim to go all the way, it doesn’t matter who we play,” Pépé said.
Curaçao needed to win and instead failed to become the smallest nation to qualify for the knockout stages.
Pépé, who plays for the Spanish club Villarreal, wiped out all the suspense in this one early, scoring in just the seventh minute and the lead held the rest of the game in front of an enthusiastic crowd that made Les Éléphants feel at home. Ivory Coast held its training base in nearby Delaware and practiced at the Philadelphia suburban home of Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union.
Throw in a friendly (against the Union’s second team), and the thrilling win in the 90th minute against Ecuador, and Les Éléphants found their adoptive fans among the crowd of 68,324 — about 40% of the population of Curaçao — at the home of the NFL’s Eagles.
The fans in Ivory Coast orange went wild when Pépé scored again on a left-footed shot from the far corner in the 64th minute to seal the win. He was subbed out three minutes later to earn just a bit more rest for the June 30 game that will serve as the biggest one for the national team in World Cup history.
Here’s one more rivalry reason why new Philly fans might keep an eye on Les Éléphants — the next game is in Dallas.
“It’s a little difficult to have to leave Philadelphia,” Ivory Coast head coach Emerse Faé said.
Ivory Coast needed only a draw to advance yet played with a competitive fire and never let Curaçao seem close to getting even in this one.
Senegal and Ivory Coast were added in December by President Donald Trump’s administration to the list of countries with partial restrictions on entry to the United States, upending World Cup travel plans.
Les Éléphants still had a loud and proud turnout in Philadelphia and boasted the home-field edge on Thursday. Ivory Coast fans hugged, danced and chanted in the stands as the final seconds ticked down and the celebration kicked into another festive gear.
“We know not everyone could make the trip, and we can see there were quite a few Ivorian fans in the stadium,” Pépé said. “So, I think this victory is for them too, and they richly deserve it.”
Ivory Coast pounced when 19-year-old Yan Diomande, who came to America four years earlier as a soccer prospect who couldn’t speak any English, snared the ball when Curaçao failed to clear it and fed it to Pépé for the easy goal past Eloy Room.
The 37-year-old Room had made 15 saves against a relentless Ecuador attack and helped The Blue Wave earn their first-ever point with a 0-0 draw on Saturday.
Faé, in his casual white polo shirt and black baseball cap, raised his arms in triumph once Pépé scored and punched his fists in the air on the sideline.
“My message would be, enjoy,” Faé said. “Now the group has to bask in this victory and this qualification. We’re very proud, very happy.”
There was still reason to celebrate for Curaçao.
“This was a great experience for us,” Room said. “It was a long journey, started a long time ago. Now we’re here. Wanted to show the world what we can do. We brought a lot of joy to the tournament. Spirit. Fight. And that we can be proud of. And I think today we also showed we can play on the highest stage.”
Curaçao is an autonomous territory of about 156,000 people in the Caribbean within the Netherlands kingdom. The team relies almost entirely on players born and raised in the Netherlands.
“They’ve been playing full enthusiasm with a lot of guts,” said 78-year-old Curaçao coach Dick Advocaat, in potentially his last international game. “This is something we have to benefit from.”
Ivory Coast striker Elye Wahi, who is under investigation for alleged betting-related offenses while playing for Nice, came on as a substitute in the second half after he sat out against Germany.
The historic clincher belonged to Pépé, and he received tons of applause after he was named the player of the game.
“This award is a team achievement, too,” he said. “I score the goals, but they come from perfect setups by my teammates, so I consider this a collective award.”
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