Asked by ARD whether he was retiring from international football, the 40-year-old Bayern Munich goalkeeper gave a simple "yes" — a brief answer that brought the curtain down on one of the most decorated careers the position has ever seen.
Germany went out on penalties after a 1-1 draw, a result that extended a run of miserable World Cup exits stretching back to 2018, when they failed to get out of the group stage, and 2022, when they suffered the same fate.
Reaching the round of 32 in 2026 represented progress — but not the kind of progress the squad had hoped for going into the tournament.
Neuer had come out of international retirement specifically for this tournament. He initially stepped away from the national team after Germany's quarter-final exit at Euro 2024 on home soil, but coach Julian Nagelsmann convinced him to return on the back of an impressive second half of the season with Bayern.
"I stepped back in 2024 with a good reason after a good home Euro. For me it was the right decision. It felt right," Neuer had said at the start of the World Cup.
"It would have been too much of a sporting burden for me to have kept playing for the national team for the last two years."
He is the fifth most-capped player in Germany's history with 125 appearances — a figure built across a career that spanned nearly two decades at the highest level.
His legacy extends well beyond statistics. Neuer redefined what a goalkeeper could be, sweeping up behind high defensive lines with the confidence and technical ability of an outfield player, and his performances for Germany in 2014 — across the tournament and in the final against Argentina — are widely considered among the finest ever produced by a goalkeeper at a World Cup.
The defeat to Paraguay ends not just Neuer's international career but the last significant connection to the generation that won Germany's only World Cup in the past 60 years.