Germany’s 2026 World Cup campaign ended not with a whimper, but with a screaming match about set pieces. Paraguay pulled off one of the tournament’s biggest upsets by eliminating the four-time champions in the round of 32 on June 30, and the aftermath has been dominated by a single disallowed goal and a very familiar voice expressing very strong opinions about it.
Jurgen Klopp, working as a pundit for MagentaTV, watched Jonathan Tah’s extra-time goal get chalked off by VAR, then did what Jurgen Klopp does best: turned a refereeing controversy into must-watch television. His target, somewhat unexpectedly, was Arsenal.
Klopp’s Arsenal broadside
“If the goal is illegal, then Arsenal won’t be English champions. They’ve scored 60 percent of their goals that way.”
The logic, stripped down: if officials are going to start disallowing goals scored from set-piece situations based on the kind of contact and movement that happened on Tah’s effort, then the entire foundation of Arsenal’s domestic success crumbles. The Gunners built their 2025/26 campaign around set-piece mastery, and Klopp was pointing out that the standards applied to Germany’s goal would, if consistently enforced, invalidate a huge chunk of Premier League action.
