Necessary draw for Germany
Only a win for Germany in the final group game will give the four-time World Cup champions a chance to avoid a second straight early elimination. At least they’re improving. Substitute Niclas Füllkrug scored in the 83rd minute Sunday to give Germany a 1-1 draw against Spain at Al Bayt Stadium in one of the most-anticipated matches of this year’s World Cup. A loss would not have eliminated Germany, but it would have left the team in a much more difficult position.
“It was important that we got this point,” Füllkrug said. “We definitely have a chance to get through to the next round now. We can now go into the last game with a good feeling and hope that everything goes well.”
Germany’s fate will be decided Thursday against Costa Rica. Even a win may not be enough for the Germans, who lost to Japan in their opener and are in last place in Group E.
If both Germany and Spain win, both will advance. If there is a draw in the Japan-Spain match, Germany will need to overcome a goal-difference deficit against the Japanese. If Japan is victorious, then the Germans will have to top Spain — which beat Costa Rica, 7-0 — on goal difference to get through.
“I hope this will give us a boost,” Germany coach Hansi Flick said, adding that he was satisfied with the result and his team’s attitude. “We know that this was the first step and we want to see against Costa Rica if we can craft the conditions to go through to the round of 16.”
Fuller lifts Costa Rica
Essentially written off after being battered by Spain, Keysher Fuller has changed everything for Costa Rica. Fuller took advantage of a defensive error and scored the only goal of the match to lead his team over Japan, 1-0.
“We’re still alive,” said Costa Rica coach Luis Fernando Suarez, a Colombian who also guided Ecuador and Honduras to World Cup berths. “We weren’t dead yesterday, and now we are very much in this. The main thing is we are still alive. No one can forget about us. We can still dream.”
Fuller scored his goal in the 81st minute after Japan failed to clear the ball. He hit the net from 18 yards, with the shot going in off the fingertips of leaping Japan goalkeeper Shuichi Gonda.
Morocco stunner
Morocco pulled off yet another World Cup shock, and Belgium’s aging “Golden Generation” took the hit this time.
The 2-0 upset left Kevin de Bruyne and the 2018 semifinalists in peril of a group-stage exit at what is likely the final World Cup for a highly talented Belgian group that haven’t managed to convert its promise into prizes.
It might now be too late.
De Bruyne didn’t drive Belgium forward against Morocco, captain Eden Hazard was taken off after an hour, and goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was probably at fault for the opening goal.
“We haven’t seen the best Belgium yet,” said Roberto Martinez, a Spaniard who has coached the team for six years. “We haven’t been ourselves.”
Belgium could have become the second team behind defending champion France to advance to the last 16 if it beat Morocco. But it dropped from first to third in Group F and now plays against 2018 World Cup finalist Croatia trying to avoid its earliest elimination since 1998.
Morocco captain Romain Saiss gave his team the lead with a barely noticeable deflection off his hip after a free kick from Abdelhamid Sabiri in the 73rd minute that got under the body of Courtois. Zakaria Aboukhlal guided a shot into the roof of the net off a pass from Hakim Ziyech in stoppage time.
Feast for the eyes
The Americans’ scoreless draw against England drew 19.98 million viewers for Englishand Spanish-language broadcasts, the third-most watched men’s soccer game on US television.
The match, which kicked off at 2 p.m. Friday, was seen by 15,377,000 viewers on Fox, the most for a US English-language men’s soccer telecast.
The figure was 6 percent above the 14.51 million for Brazil’s penalty-kicks win over Italy in the July 1994 final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., a Sunday 3:30 p.m. start on ABC.
The United States-England game was viewed by 4.6 million on Telemundo, a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBC-Universal. It was the third-most-watched Spanish language World Cup telecast in the United States since at least 2006, topped by the Americans’ 2-2 group-stage draw with Portugal in 2014, seen by 6.5 million on Univision with a 6 p.m. start in mid-June, and Brazil’s 2-0 win over Serbia on Thursday, a 2 p.m. game seen by 5.7 million on Thanksgiving.