Germany thrashes Curaçao 7-1 in World Cup opener

Germany opened its World Cup campaign with a 7-1 dismantling of debutant Curaçao, and the clearest takeaway was not the scoreline itself but the range of options Julian Nagelsmann now has in attack. Deniz Undav came off the bench in Houston and finished with three goal contributions, a strong sign that Germany’s scoring threat extends well beyond its headline names.

The match at Houston Stadium on Sunday, June 14, 2026, began with Germany in control and ended with a result that gave the national team its first World Cup opening victory since 2014. Curaçao, ranked 82nd by the DFB and making its first appearance on the World Cup stage, had never faced Germany before and struggled to contain the pace and movement of a side that scored freely from multiple positions.

Kai Havertz led the way with two goals, while Nmecha, Nico Schlotterbeck, Jamal Musiala and Brown also found the net for Germany. Undav’s influence came from the bench, where the Stuttgart forward sharpened the attack rather than simply adding depth in numbers. He was directly involved in three scoring actions, including the pass that helped set up Havertz for Germany’s seventh goal after earlier contributing to the move for the 6-1.

For Germany, that distribution of goals mattered as much as the margin. A team that can lean on Havertz, Musiala and other established names still needs reliable production from secondary scorers when the opposition is stronger than Curaçao. This was precisely the sort of game that can inflate confidence without answering harder questions, yet Undav’s timing and execution offered a useful answer to one of them: Germany may have enough finishing options to survive when one star is marked out of the game.

Germany now moves deeper into Group E with matches against Costa de Marfil on June 20 and Ecuador on June 25. After a start this emphatic, the challenge is not proving that Germany can score in a rout. It is showing that the same depth and efficiency can hold when the margins narrow and the opposition begins to close space.