Germany are one of a handful of national teams without an acceptable bar for failure. It simply doesn't exist for a country with four World Cup stars above their team badge.
They win it or they don't, and for Germany that means returning to New Jersey's MetLife Stadium on Sunday, July 19, a little over three weeks after they ended the group stage there with a 2-1 loss against Ecuador.
Julian Nagelsmann could justifiably point to the fact that his team had already tied up first place in Group E. The last matches left Germany and Ivory Coast both on six points but Die Mannschaft had the head-to-head advantage and their goal difference was vastly superior in any case.
Germany have been emphatic and off-colour in the space of three World Cup group games
Yet the progression of Germany's results and the accompanying performances might just have the head coach quietly taking a microscopic look at some of the details.
Thrashing Curacao and squeaking past Ivory Coast harvested six points; textbook tournament football. Losing the next game might not matter at all. It certainly doesn't change anything tangible. The concern, if there is one, is that Germany have played less assuredly with each game.
Germany's next opponents can look at how their group played out and quite fairly draw the conclusion that the post-hydration break battering of Curacao was imposing but misleading.
It would be uncharitable to say Germany were fortunate to beat Ivory Coast but it would also be true to an extent. Failing to win wouldn't have been any more warranted a result but it nearly happened regardless.
Losing to Ecuador was deserved and that's a worry. Germany took an early lead that might have been disallowed on another day, coughed it up almost immediately, and then went on to lose. If robustness is a trait of World Cup winners in waiting, Germany's first game at MetLife wasn't a good omen.
Germany have that troublesome combination of weaknesses at either end of the pitch.
Manuel Neuer has been a phenomenal goalkeeper. He was a pioneer and he won it all. For a time, he was the best in the world. The goals Germany conceded against Ecuador demonstrated first a physical decline and then a lapse of mental sharpness in a key moment.
The Ecuador game was evidently one of fine margins and the difference between a former world-leading goalkeeper and a currently elite one is, at this level, worth three points.
Ivory Coast and Ecuador both conceded half as many goals as Germany's four in the group but there's also something to prove in the attacking third when the Germans return to action in the round of 32 in Boston.
Four players in Germany's squad were listed as forwards and each one comes with a 'but'.
Kai Havertz and Deniz Undav have both hit the net more than once at the World Cup but Havertz acknowledges that he does much of his work without the ball and Undav, prolific in the last couple of seasons, has never played in an international tournament before.
There are goals elsewhere in the Germany team. Felix Nmecha's off the mark. Leroy Sane is too. Jamal Musiala has one. Take out the Curacao anomaly – a mistake for real analysts but perhaps illuminating for the rest of us – and the absence of a classic, prolific German frontman starts to look like a potential issue in the bearpit that is knock-out football.
Here's another one of those 'buts'... but this is Germany and the Ecuador match, for all intents and purposes a dead rubber for Nagelsmann's side, was just as much an outlier as Curacao.
There's a reason few fans are willing to write off Germany at a World Cup. They've proven time and again that this is their playground, that they have the mentality when it counts in a way most nations can only envy.
