Jose Canale took the longest walk in football — the one from the centre circle to the penalty spot with a World Cup on the line — and he didn't flinch. His penalty went in, Paraguay's bench erupted, and somewhere back in Asunción, an entire country lost its mind. This is what the World Cup is for.
It came down to Canale. It usually comes down to someone nobody outside the country could have told you about three weeks ago, and that is precisely what makes these nights so good. He struck it cleanly, the goalkeeper went the wrong way, and Paraguay were through.
The scenes in Los Angeles were immediate and overwhelming — players on the floor, staff sprinting from the technical area, tears that nobody was trying to hide. These are not a squad built from European first-team regulars. This is a group that had to fight for every inch of this tournament, and the emotion in those post-shootout minutes reflected exactly that.
Paraguay have not been regulars on the World Cup stage in recent cycles, and the weight of that absence made this moment land even harder. For a football nation that lives and breathes the sport but rarely gets to exhale at its biggest tournament, a penalty-shootout giant-killing in Los Angeles is not just a result — it is a story that will be told for decades.
The players knew it too. You could see it in the way they celebrated — not the choreographed routines of squads who do this every summer, but something rawer. Canale looked like a man who had just realised what he'd done.
The 2026 World Cup, spread across the United States, Canada and Mexico, was always going to produce moments like this — the expanded format, the new venues, the unfamiliar pressure of a 48-team draw all but guaranteeing at least one result that rewrites the narrative. Paraguay just wrote theirs.
The identity of the opponent they eliminated has not been confirmed in available sources at time of publication — Flagside will update this piece once that detail is verified. What is confirmed: Paraguay are through, Canale scored the decisive kick, and the celebrations in Los Angeles went long into the night.
Somewhere in the dressing room, someone was still crying. Nobody was telling them to stop.
Jose Canale took the longest walk in football — the one from the centre circle to the penalty spot with a World Cup on the line — and he didn't flinch.
Fontes
Capital Sports, BBC Sport — Football
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