Two-time cham­pi­on Ger­many failed to reach the knock­out stage for the first time ever at the Women’s World Cup af­ter be­ing held to a 1-1 draw by South Ko­rea in a tense group fi­nale.

Mo­roc­co’s 1-0 win over Colom­bia in Perth added pres­sure on a Ger­man team that then need­ed to beat South Ko­rea in Bris­bane to ad­vance. The last two group-stage games of the tour­na­ment kicked off si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly Thurs­day night on op­po­site sides of Aus­tralia.

Ger­many pushed for­ward in search of the win­ning goal, know­ing the equa­tion re­quired to ad­vance. Led by the head of cap­tain Alexan­dra Popp, the Ger­mans cre­at­ed nu­mer­ous scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties but couldn’t find the win­ner.

Colom­bia fin­ished atop Group H and Mo­roc­co took sec­ond place with six points, a re­mark­able turn­around af­ter be­ing rout­ed 6-0 by Ger­many in its de­but game at the tour­na­ment. No. 2-ranked Ger­many, fi­nal­ists at the 2022 Eu­ros, fin­ished with four points.

South Ko­rea struck in the sixth minute when a de­fense-split­ting pass from Lee Young-ju found Cho So-hyun, who pro­duced a calm fin­ish af­ter a per­fect­ly timed run in­to open space.

In the 42nd, Popp equal­ized for Ger­many with a tow­er­ing head­er off a cross from Sven­ja Huth.

Ger­many chased the win­ning goal through­out the sec­ond half. The Ger­mans had a would-be win­ning goal from Popp over­turned by VAR in the 57th. Just a few min­utes lat­er, Popp went close to scor­ing with an­oth­er head­er but was de­nied by the cross­bar.

Ger­many’s fi­nal scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties came in the 11th and 12th min­utes of stop­page time when two shots from Syd­ney Lohmann missed wide and high.

WHY IT MAT­TERS

Ger­many, the sec­ond-ranked team in the world, failed to ad­vance from the group stage for the first time in nine ap­pear­ances in the Women’s World Cup.

South Ko­rea fin­ished in last place in the group with one point but can take away some­thing from the tour­na­ment af­ter hold­ing the two-time cham­pi­ons to a draw.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

“We need some time to process what has hap­pened and to be able to find some con­fi­dence again. At this stage, we know that our squad is good, but we were not good enough in these last two games.” — Alexan­dra Popp, Ger­many for­ward.

WHAT’S NEXT

As third and fourth place fin­ish­ers in the group, Ger­many and South Ko­rea will each be head­ing home.

Colom­bia will face Ja­maica in Mel­bourne, while Mo­roc­co will head to Ade­laide to take on France in the round-of-16.