Why Florian Wirtz was the one bright spark in Germany's World Cup exit to Paraguay

[p]The Liverpool playmaker recorded his third assist for Germany in the loss to Paraguay and received a rating of 8.8 from Flashscore, the best among all players in the match. What’s behind that score?[/p][p]Above all, he earned it as the driving force of [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/team/germany/ptQide1O/"]Germany’s[/a] play, which otherwise lacked creativity and was sluggish and slow.[/p][p]Against an opponent sitting deep at the back, the favourites struggled to create chances in dangerous areas.[/p][p]Germany sent 77 passes into the box, the most at this World Cup, and that doesn't even include corners. The problem was that most of those passes went into a dense forest of Paraguayan defenders and rarely found a German player’s foot. Out of nearly eighty, only 20 were successful, and of those, [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/player/wirtz-florian/0Q5gjImi/"]Wirtz[/a] delivered 13, accounting for 65%.[/p][image alt="Wirtz’s passing map in the match against Paraguay." id="b4f2f37c-8d72-483d-a1ab-2bcc87e40691" credit-line="Opta by Stats Perform" guid="b9c32052-03e4-48d0-9f7d-38d8e5422942" original-width="768" original-height="576" /][p]In total, he set up four shooting opportunities for his teammates, and from his cross into the box, [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/player/havertz-kai/rH8BZWiI/"]Kai Havertz[/a] equalised with a header in the 54th minute.[/p][p]Wirtz's passes in the match accumulated an xA value of 0.67, which is very high - the 10th best single-game performance by a player in the tournament.[/p][p]He also recorded 12 progressive carries, one of which ended in a shot, and four successful dribbles.[/p][p]Thanks to all these stats, he achieved a very high rating for playmaking in the Flashscore evaluation.[/p][p]On top of that, Wirtz delivered solid numbers in virtually every aspect, helping his team defensively as well. [/p][p]Twice he managed to win the ball from an opponent in a duel, once near the opposition’s penalty area. He succeeded in eight out of twelve duels in total and also recovered the ball five times, twice in Germany’s attacking third.[/p][p][b][a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/game/soccer/germany-ptQide1O/paraguay-YaNlqp6j/?mid=2y2UKhp1"]Click here for more on Germany vs Paraguay[/a][/b][/p][p][i][b]Flashscore introduced a new football player rating system for the 2026 World Cup.[/b] Whether you’re a casual fan of the beautiful game or love to dive into the data, this is the perfect player evaluation for you.[/i][/p][embed guid="eb23ffe6-4aa0-4789-80b9-e6fadc669e48" url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7vm7uz1CVU" social-type="youtube" /]