Germany threw 55 crosses at Paraguay and completed 10. Then they went home.
That stat explains the upset better than any underdog romance. Paraguay's low block is built for exactly that diet: hopeful deliveries into a packed box.
Here is what Germany never had: a player to put the ball through the wall instead of over it. All that territory - 26.9 penalty-area touches per 90 - and nobody to attack the last shoulder, nobody to pause between the lines and play the pass that breaks a block open.
France have four of them.
Mbappe attacks the blind side of a defence before it can set. Dembele shows a defender the touchline and then is not there. Olise finds the half-space pass that turns a block into a scramble. And Barcola just runs - straight lines at tired legs, which is how he scored in the 3-0 win over Sweden.
The numbers agree: thirteen goals from 8.86 xG, Mbappe's brace against Sweden, and post-match coverage - the Guardian among it - of an attack still holding something in reserve.
Paraguay's block deserves its due. Opponents' shots against them are worth just 0.092 xG apiece - a low block forcing bad shots from bad angles, with Orlando Gill saving the rest. That is a skill, not a streak.
But it is a skill built against crossers. Paraguay have conceded five goals in this tournament, and four came in one night: their opener, when the USA ran at the block instead of crossing into it and won 4-1, Folarin Balogun striking twice. Runners break this wall. Deliveries feed it.
The gap in class is not subtle: 24.4 penalty-area touches per 90 for France, 6.6 for Paraguay.
History agrees. In 1998, Jose Luis Chilavert's Paraguay held France for nearly two hours before Laurent Blanc's golden goal finally settled it. That France side wore blocks down. This one runs through them.
France do everything that USA attack did, with better players on every line.
So watch the first twenty minutes - France's box entries, not their possession count. Wide, cross, recycle was Germany's script, and Deschamps' forwards don't own a copy. Olise between the lines, cutbacks, runners beyond Mbappe: if that is what the opening looks like, Paraguay already know how this ends. They watched it on June 12.