Everton's Struggles Continue in Stuttgart Loss

Everton’s German tour ended with a familiar, nagging problem: they still can’t finish.

A 3-1 defeat to VfB Stuttgart at the MHPArena told the story of a side that created enough chances to win two games, yet walked away beaten and with fresh questions about their cutting edge.

Wasteful Everton punished

Jarrad Branthwaite, wearing the armband, led Everton out for their second and final game in Germany, but it was Stuttgart who settled quickest. The hosts kept the ball, probed the flanks and forced Everton back, with Branthwaite himself snuffing out an early, dangerous break before Beto muscled his way upfield and ran out of touch at the last moment.

That pattern set the tone. O’Brien, deputising at centre-back alongside Branthwaite, was forced to concede an early corner that almost brought the opener, the final effort flashing wide from a tight angle. At the other end, Lewis Dobbin Dibling – nervous and hesitant in the opening stages – stumbled through a couple of forays without conviction.

Hayden Hackney, starting in midfield, tried to force the issue with an ambitious forward ball that never looked on, and Stuttgart came again. Only after the 10-minute mark did Everton begin to see any meaningful possession.

Then came the first of several gifts that went unused. Carlos Alcaraz pounced on a dreadful pass from the Stuttgart goalkeeper and rolled the ball into Beto’s path, only for the striker to lash his shot well wide. Everton started winning turnovers in midfield, started stringing passes together, started to look like a team. Hackney arrived on the edge of the box and sliced his effort inches the wrong side of the upright.

The warning had been there from the first whistle. It was ignored. When the opener came, it was emphatic. Nartey stepped onto a loose ball and thundered a rising drive into the roof of the net, giving Mark Travers no chance and underlining Stuttgart’s greater ruthlessness.

An early reshuffle followed. Tim Iroegbunam went off injured after just 18 minutes, Michael Keane coming on and ending the fledgling O’Brien–Branthwaite partnership almost before it had begun. Dibling looked to respond, bursting into the area and going down under pressure, but the referee waved play on and Stuttgart promptly broke to waste a chance of their own.

From there, Everton’s attacking play became a strange mix of invention and ineptitude. Branthwaite surged out from the back to spark a move that saw Alcaraz feed Röhl, only for the shot to be blocked. Beto attempted an extravagant bicycle kick that never looked likely to connect. Moments later, Alcaraz escaped down the left and whipped in a vicious low cross that Beto just failed to reach.

Dibling, slowly growing into the game, started to find pockets of space but his delivery lacked the speed to trouble a well-drilled defence. A flurry of half-chances followed: Alcaraz and Röhl combined, crosses fizzed through the box, but the final touch was always missing.

The miss of the afternoon belonged, inevitably, to Beto. Travers launched a clearance towards the striker, who climbed well to flick on for Röhl. The right-back returned a perfect cross into the six-yard box, Beto arriving unmarked. Somehow, with the goal gaping, he swung and connected with nothing but air. It was an astonishing miss, the kind that draws hands to heads even in a pre-season friendly.

Everton kept coming. Röhl found Dibling at the back post, forcing a low save at the near stick. From the resulting corner, Beto again rose well but powered his header over when a faint glance would likely have done the job.

Stuttgart reminded Everton of the stakes with a couple of sharp ripostes. Mittelstädt drove a rising effort over from distance, then from a corner a towering header looked destined for the top corner until Travers flung himself across to claw it away. Another low drive was beaten out by the keeper’s outstretched foot as the home side enjoyed a spell of sustained pressure.

Everton still had moments – Alcaraz slid Röhl in down the right, only for the cross to miss its target, and Beto once more broke free before hesitating fatally – but the half ended with the Premier League side trailing and ruing a catalogue of squandered opportunities.

They should have been ahead. Comfortably.

Penalty lifeline, then late collapse

Alcaraz got the second half under way with Everton unchanged, yet it was Stuttgart who again seized the initiative. Travers, excellent throughout his 76 minutes, produced a string of stops, including one remarkable reaction save on the line after Alcaraz inadvertently headed towards his own goal from a corner.

Dibling, now more assertive, drove at defenders and tried to link with Beto, who was repeatedly crowded out. Keane conceded a free-kick that invited pressure, and Stuttgart almost doubled their lead when a fierce effort beat Travers but cannoned back off the post.

Everton’s own work in the final third continued to fray. Vitalii Mykolenko, well placed on the left, delivered a dreadful cross that sailed harmlessly away. A fine long pass from Keane sent Beto clear again, the striker doing the hard part before laying the ball straight to a defender.

Dibling did manage to slip Armstrong into space, only for the move to fizzle out, while at the other end Stuttgart’s quick one-touch combinations yielded corners rather than clear chances. On the hour, the Germans made wholesale changes, injecting fresh legs and forcing Everton to defend a couple of set-pieces, one of which brought a soft header that drifted wide with Travers stranded.

Sean Dyche’s side responded with changes of their own. Röhl, Alcaraz, Dibling and Beto all made way on 64 minutes for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Ndiaye, George and Barry, with King later replacing Travers, Patterson, Aznou and others joining the fray in a raft of substitutions.

Ndiaye immediately showed a sharper instinct in transition, releasing Barry quickly down the right, though the winger was isolated and dispossessed. There was a brief scare when Branthwaite clutched at his leg – thigh, knee, or lower, it was hard to tell – but after treatment he assured the physios he could continue.

Then, finally, Everton got the slice of fortune their approach play had threatened. A neat exchange saw Beto race through, collide with the onrushing goalkeeper and somehow emerge with an “extremely soft” penalty. Stuttgart protested; the referee pointed to the spot. Beto stepped up and buried it with authority on 72 minutes, a small measure of redemption after his earlier horror miss.

The equaliser should have steadied Everton. Instead, Stuttgart raised the tempo again. Hackney produced a desperate clearance to cut out one slick move that looked destined to end in a goal, only for another flowing attack to finish with a header clipping the top of King’s crossbar. The substitute keeper then made a routine save from a wide angle effort as the Bundesliga side turned the screw.

The game lost structure as the substitutions piled up. Everton’s passing became ragged, their pressing disjointed. Stuttgart, by contrast, retained enough cohesion to punish errors. A poor Keane clearance late on came straight back, the defence failed to reset, and the third Stuttgart goal was swept in far too easily.

Everton still had chances in a chaotic final spell. A late corner saw Keane’s header clawed off the line, Ndiaye’s follow-up blocked twice, one attempt possibly over before it was hacked clear. Another corner in an oddly extended period of stoppage time saw Dewsbury-Hall rise and glance a header just wide.

The whistle brought an end to a game that, on another day, Everton might have taken something from. The movement was there, the pressing spells were encouraging, and Travers in particular impressed.

But the glaring issue hung over everything. From Beto’s air-kick to a string of miscued headers and overhit crosses, this was a pre-season afternoon that underlined, in bold, the problem Everton cannot afford to carry into the new campaign: when the chances come, who is going to put the ball in the net?