CHENNAI: Football’s new world order is here, and you just can’t deny it. At the start of the 48-team World Cup, the narrative was that some of the sides were here to just make up numbers.

Turns out, they are not; these sides are here to shake things up, as Paraguay and Morocco showed first-hand, beating European behemoths like Germany and the Netherlands.

Before Tuesday, Germany had never lost to Paraguay, never lost a penalty shoot-out in World Cups, yet even as the odds favoured them, it was the sixth-best side from South America which took home the honours.

Paraguay’s run in the South American qualifier was far from just being sixth-best, as the La Albirroja beat Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. But its biggest win was when it beat the four-time World Cup holders Germany in the Round of 32.

Interestingly, though, there’s some history between the two sides. 24 years ago, at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which happened in Korea and Japan, Germany defeated Paraguay 1-0 in the Round of 16, thanks to Oliver Neuville’s strike in the 88th minute. Six World Cups later, Paraguay not just took its revenge excruciatingly for Germany, which lost the clash on penalties (3-4). It was the Paraguayan forward Julio Enciso who scored the country’s first-ever goal in knockouts, helping the South American side take a 1-0 lead.

Prior to this, Paraguay had made it to five knockout games in the World Cup (1986, 1998, 2002 & 2010), and yet it was the country’s first-ever goal.

Although Germany scored twice the second of which was disallowed after a ‘controversial’ foul, it was Orlando Gill’s masterclass in the penalties that shifted the knockout clash in Paraguay’s favour.