Undav's Late Double Spares Germany's Blushes in 2–1 Win Over Ivory Coast
For an hour or so on Saturday night, the script that everyone in Group E had been writing for Germany looked like it was about to be torn up. Ivory Coast, organised and dangerous, had taken the lead through Franck Kessié and were defending it with the kind of stubbornness that wins tournaments. And then Deniz Undav decided the evening belonged to him. Two goals in the final 22 minutes — one to level, one to win it at the death — turned a nervy, tightening contest into a 2–1 victory that keeps Germany top of the group with a flawless record. It was not comfortable, it was not pretty for long stretches, but it was, in the end, exactly the result Germany needed.
The first half had belonged to the underdogs, and there was nothing fortunate about it. Ivory Coast struck in the 30th minute, and the goal carried the unmistakable signature of the man who scored it. Kessié, the 29-year-old Al-Ahli midfielder, has long been the sort of player who arrives in the box when the moment demands it, and here he timed his run and finish to perfection to put his side in front. It was the kind of strike that comes naturally to a footballer of his standing in the game. With 102 caps to his name, Kessié is one of the senior figures in this Ivory Coast side, a player whose experience is measured not in matches but in eras, and the goal was his 15th at international level — and, tellingly, his first at a World Cup. For a player of his pedigree to wait this long for that particular milestone tells you something about the fine margins of tournament football, and there was a visible release in the celebration that followed.
That lead held up through the interval and well into the second half, and as the clock ticked past the hour mark the questions around Germany grew louder. This is a side that had blown Curaçao away 7–1 in their opening fixture, a result that flattered to deceive nobody about their attacking ceiling. Yet here they were, chasing a game against a disciplined opponent, the goals that had flowed so freely a week earlier suddenly proving stubbornly hard to come by. Ivory Coast, for their part, looked entirely capable of holding on. They had opened their own campaign with a 1–0 win over Ecuador, a result built on exactly this template — a goal, then a back line that refused to break — and for long spells it seemed they might repeat the trick on a far grander stage.
Undav changes the temperature
Then came the 68th minute, and with it the first decisive intervention from Undav. The VfB Stuttgart forward, 29 years old and still something of a late bloomer on the international scene, found the finish that Germany had been straining for, and the equaliser changed the temperature of the whole contest. Suddenly it was Ivory Coast on the back foot, suddenly the momentum that had been theirs for an hour had drained away, and suddenly Germany believed. There is a particular cruelty to conceding a leveller after defending so well for so long, and you could sense the shift in the rhythm of the match from that moment on.
Germany pushed for the winner, and they got it in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. In the 90th minute, with the game seemingly drifting towards a draw that would have felt like a moral victory for Ivory Coast, Undav struck again. His second of the night, and Germany's second of the match, arrived at the very moment the visitors must have been counting down the seconds to a hard-earned point. There was no way back from it. The two goals took Undav's tally at this World Cup to three, a return that places him among the genuine stories of the group stage so far, and underlines just how quickly he has become indispensable to this German attack. With only nine caps to his name, he has already scored six times for his country — and half of those have come at this tournament. That is the trajectory of a player seizing his moment.
The brace also tells a tactical story without needing to invent one. Germany did not dismantle Ivory Coast the way they had dismantled Curaçao; they ground them down, and when the breakthroughs came they came through the man whose job it is to be in the right place when the chances finally fall. Undav's first settled Germany's nerves; his second settled the contest. Between those two moments lay the difference between a draw that would have re-opened the group and a win that, for now, keeps Germany in command of their own destiny.
What it means for Group E
The table tells the clearest version of the story. Germany sit top of Group E with two wins from two and a maximum six points, their goal difference an imposing plus-seven thanks to nine scored and just two conceded across the two matches. The blowout against Curaçao did the heavy lifting on that differential, but the win over Ivory Coast did the more important job of preserving the unbeaten record and the top spot. With one group game remaining, away to Ecuador on 26 June, Germany are in the strongest possible position — a side that has banked the points and can now approach their final fixture without the pressure of needing a result.
For Ivory Coast, the defeat is a setback but very far from a disaster. They remain second in the group on three points, level on the matches that matter and crucially still in control of their own qualification hopes. The defeat leaves their goal difference at zero — two scored, two conceded — which is a reminder of just how tight their two games have been. They beat Ecuador by a single goal and lost to Germany by a single goal, and there is no shame in being edged out by the group leaders in a contest they led for so long. Their final game, away to Curaçao on 26 June, now carries enormous weight: a win there would all but guarantee their progress, and on the evidence of their first two performances they have every reason to believe they can get it.
The two teams chasing them are running out of room. Ecuador, despite that opening goalless stalemate and a narrow loss, sit third on a single point, while Curaçao — on the wrong end of that 7–1 against Germany — prop up the table on one point with a goal difference of minus-six. The maths of the final round is starting to crystallise, and the simplest reading of it is that Germany and Ivory Coast hold the cards. Saturday's result did nothing to change the pecking order at the top; if anything, it confirmed it.
Where our call went wrong
It would be remiss not to hold our own pre-match prediction up to the light, because this is one we got wrong. We went with Germany to win by at least one clear goal — GER −1 on the handicap — at a confidence of 72%, and the logic behind it was straightforward enough. Our reading was that Ivory Coast's goalkeeper had been their busiest player to that point and that Germany's attacking weight would eventually tell, producing a comfortable margin. The first part of that thesis held up; the second did not. Germany did win, but they won by a single goal, and a one-goal margin is precisely the scenario the −1 handicap does not reward. The tip lands as a miss.
What did we underrate? Chiefly, the conviction of Ivory Coast's first-half display. We anticipated a one-sided affair in which the visitors absorbed pressure and rode their luck; instead they took the lead through Kessié and defended it with real authority for the better part of an hour. We were right that Germany would need their forwards to deliver, and Undav duly obliged — but a brace that arrives in the 68th and 90th minutes is the very definition of a narrow win, not the emphatic one our handicap demanded. The 7–1 against Curaçao clearly coloured our expectations of Germany's ceiling, and it is a useful reminder that a thrashing of the group's weakest side is a poor guide to how a team will fare against organised, motivated opposition. Confidence of 72% looks, in hindsight, like a number that gave Ivory Coast too little credit for the resilience they had already shown in beating Ecuador.
None of which should diminish what Germany achieved. Winning ugly is a skill in its own right, and tournament-winning sides tend to be the ones who find a way through on the nights when the football refuses to flow. Undav's late double was both a rescue act and a statement of intent, and it leaves Germany exactly where they wanted to be — top of Group E, six points from six, and carrying the form and the momentum into the final round. Ivory Coast will rue the manner of the defeat, but they leave this fixture with their heads high and their fate still in their own hands. The closing matchday on 26 June promises to settle a group that, after two rounds, has tightened into something genuinely worth watching.
