← Beyond the Pitch Eliminated

Paraguay

La Albirroja — back at the World Cup after 16 years in the wilderness, and still the most annoying team in South America to play

Eliminated Round of 16, July 4, 2026 — lost 0-1 to France (Mbappé 70' pen)

Status

Eliminated

Region

CONMEBOL

World Cup Appearances

Code

The Story

Paraguay is back. Sixteen years since South Africa 2010, the longest gap between World Cup appearances for a CONMEBOL country not named Bolivia, and it took the appointment of an Argentine coach — Gustavo Alfaro, the former Ecuador manager — to finally break the streak. He took over in mid-2024 with Paraguay sixth in the table and no realistic qualification path. They then beat Argentina 1-0 in Asunción, beat Brazil 1-0 in Asunción, and booked the last automatic CONMEBOL spot with a match to spare.

The team Alfaro built is the team Paraguay has always wanted to be — organized at the back around Gustavo Gómez, compact through midfield with Andrés Cubas and Damián Bobadilla, and counter-attacking through Enciso and Sanabria. It is not a team that scores a lot. It is a team that doesn't concede a lot, and that's been enough.

Group J suits them. No European heavyweight. Ivory Coast is the favorite and is probably beatable. Tunisia is a game of inches. Honduras, the CONCACAF floor, is the one they have to win. Paraguay has never won a World Cup group stage match since 1998 — the whole tournament experience since then has been draws, penalty shootouts, and 1-0 losses in the 82nd minute. This summer is the first realistic chance in a generation to reset that record.

Week 1 Update: The record got worse, not better. A 4-1 loss to the United States in the opener — the hosts tore through Alfaro's compact shape like it wasn't there, and Paraguay's 16-year absence looked every day of its length. Enciso pulled one back, but it was a consolation goal in a match that was over by halftime. The group is not lost, but the margin for error just vanished.

Matchday 2 Update: Paraguay beat Turkiye 1-0 — and did it with ten men for the entire second half. Miguel Almirón, the 32-year-old whose story on this page is about this being almost certainly his only World Cup, was sent off in the 45+3 minute for a verbal altercation with Turkish players after covering his mouth during the exchange. A red card, a walk down the tunnel, and 45 minutes of Paraguayan football at its most stubborn. Alfaro got the response he needed after the USA mauling, the defense remembered how to be Paraguayan, and La Albirroja ground out a result a man down that most teams couldn't manage at full strength. Three points with one match left. The group is wide open behind the Americans, and Paraguay's tradition of grinding out results against everyone who isn't the tournament favorite is alive and well.

Matchday 3 Update: Drew Australia 0-0 — and that single point was enough. Paraguay finish 2nd in Group D with 4 points, and the 16-year absence officially produced a knockout-round berth. Alfaro's compact defense held firm one more time, the point secured the spot, and La Albirroja advance to the Round of 32. The 2010 rope-a-dope tradition lives on.

Round of 32 (June 29): Paraguay 1, Germany 1 — and then 4-3 on penalties, and Julio Enciso's 45th-minute header at Gillette Stadium might be the most important goal in La Albirroja's history. Germany equalized through Havertz in the 54th, the match ground to extra time, a Jonathan Tah strike was erased by VAR for a foul, and then the shootout delivered something the record books had never seen: Germany losing a World Cup penalty shootout for the first time in their history. Almirón watched from the stands, serving his suspension. Enciso was on the pitch doing exactly what Alfaro always believed he would. Paraguay are in the Round of 16.

Round of 16 (July 4): The scoreline was 0-1 but this was not a football lesson — it was a wall collapsing one brick at a time. Paraguay defended the 39-degree heat in Philadelphia for 69 minutes, kept France to long-range shots, suffocated the space Mbappé lives in, and genuinely looked like they might hold. Then Désiré Doué was fouled in the box, VAR pointed to the spot, and Mbappé buried it. Game over. Paraguay pushed forward and never found the equalizer. Their run ends here: 16 years away from the World Cup, back in the knockouts, a round-of-32 penalty shootout win over Germany, and a fight against the tournament's best team that they refused to concede early. Almirón, suspended for the entire knockout stage, watched again from the stands. Enciso left the pitch unable to change the outcome. Some stories end without justice — this one ends with pride intact.

3 Players to Know

Gustavo Gómez

The captain. Thirty-two, AC Milan's former center-back, now Palmeiras' and the backbone of a defense that's been carrying Paraguay through qualifying. Eighty-plus caps, league titles in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil — the kind of career résumé that doesn't show up on FIFA ratings but makes every South American coach immediately want him. He scored the header that beat Brazil 1-0 in Asunción in qualifying — a result that put Paraguay on the road to 2026 and gave the country one of the loudest nights it's had in a decade.

Julio Enciso

If Paraguay has a star, it's Enciso. He's 22, he grew up in Caaguazú, he was plucked from Libertad at 18 by Brighton, then sold to Strasbourg in the summer of 2025 as part of the BlueCo group move. His 30-yard curler against Manchester City in 2023 was the goal of that Premier League season. He's recovered from the knee injury that wrecked most of his 2023-24 and scored three goals in Paraguay's qualifying run. The talent is Champions League. The body has been fragile. June is the first time the whole world gets to find out which version shows up.

Antonio 'Tony' Sanabria

Torino's target forward for the better part of six seasons, born in Asunción, came up in Barcelona's La Masia before Spain quietly decided he wasn't going to make it there. He's 30, he's the striker Gustavo Alfaro has settled on up top, and he scored the only goal of the 1-0 win over Argentina in Asunción in September 2024 that made the world take Paraguay seriously again. Not a player who scores a lot. A player who scores the ones that matter.

The Food

Signature Dish

Sopa paraguaya is the national dish, and the great joke of it is that it isn't soup — it's a dense, warm cornbread baked with sharp white cheese and onion, cut into squares and served alongside the actual soup. Then chipá: a small, chewy roll of cassava flour and queso Paraguay, sold hot from street baskets at every bus stop in Asunción and Ciudad del Este. The grilled meat ritual is asado on an asador vertical, beef salted heavily, served with mandioca (boiled cassava) instead of potatoes. Terere — iced yerba mate with cold water and crushed herbs — is the drink, and it's drunk from a cup called a guampa through a metal straw, and it's passed around the group.

Where to Eat in DFW

DFW doesn't have a Paraguayan restaurant — the diaspora is too small — so the call is Corrientes 348 in the Dallas Arts District. It's Argentine, but the South American parrilla tradition is the one Paraguay shares most closely: wood-fired beef, mixed grill for the table, chimichurri, the parrillero walking out with skewers. For the chipá and sopa paraguaya side of Paraguayan cooking, your best bet is the Hispanic bakery counter at El Rancho Supermercado in Irving, where someone is almost certainly making something close to it for the neighborhood. Reservations at Corrientes go fast on match days.

The Music

A soundtrack for the matches, the pregame, and the afterparty.

Fan Culture

Paraguay is the country whose fan choreography involves a giant red-and-white flag, an accordion player (literally — polka paraguaya is a national genre and someone is always playing it), and the longest 16-year grievance in South American football. The 2010 quarterfinal loss to Spain is still processed as theft. The "Paraguay, campeón" chant is ironic and sincere at the same time. Their fans travel in lower numbers than Argentina or Brazil, but the ones who show up are loud, polished in their singing, and carry flags with the names of every small town between Asunción and Encarnación. The smell is chorizo and yerba mate — and yes, someone at your section is absolutely sharing terere from a guampa, because that's what you do.

Fun Fact

At the 2010 World Cup — their last appearance before this one — Paraguay reached the quarterfinals without winning any of their five matches in regulation time. They drew three, won one on penalties, and lost 1-0 to Spain in the 82nd minute. The ultimate CONMEBOL rope-a-dope.