{"id":184716,"date":"2025-06-14T21:20:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T21:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184716\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T21:20:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T21:20:19","slug":"luke-littler-and-luke-humphries-out-of-world-cup-as-germany-stun-england-other-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184716\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Littler and Luke Humphries out of World Cup as Germany stun England | Other | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

The England duo of Luke Littler<\/a> and Luke Humphies<\/a> have been dumped out of the World Cup of Darts<\/a> by hosts Germany in a massive surprise. The England duo were huge pre-tournament favourites but were both below par against Martin Schindler and Ricardo Pietreczko as they lost 8-4 in what was their first match in Frankfurt. England were also the defending champions after Humphries and Michael Smith proved victorious last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet they crumbled in front of a partisan atmosphere. The home hopes raced into a 2-0 lead with every dart cheered loudly by the 3,500 spectators present. Littler and Humphries bounced back to level matters, but then blew a winnable position in leg five and failed to recover as they went into the break 5-2 down. Germany then won two more legs immediately after the interval to send the crowd into raptures.<\/p>\n

Despite appearing rattled, Littler and Humphries reduced the deficit to 7-4 but hopes of a comeback were then dashed. Left needing 62 for glory, Pietreczko hit a single 10, followed by a 20, and then took out a double 16.<\/p>\n

Pre-match, Schindler had insisted that the team of the reigning world champion and Premier League<\/a> champion were not unbeatable. And afterwards he revelled in backing up his bullish words.<\/p>\n

“I was right,” he told Sky Sports. “We believed in ourselves and I think we’ve been putting in a solid performance and obviously the double 16s from Ricardo when it mattered. We are very happy to go through.”<\/p>\n

Explaining why his partner threw first in each leg on his tournament debut, Schindler added: “To be honest he said to me, he’s used to being the front guy of the pairs team. I said ‘If you feel well with it, go for it.'”<\/p>\n

Germany will now play the winners of Australia and Argentina in the quarter-final tomorrow. Asked about the prospect of sealing the title for his country for the first time ever, Pietreczko was in no doubt.<\/p>\n

He said: “It’s unbelievable. You hear the crowd. For sure we can go all the way. We’re here to win.”<\/p>\n

Both Littler and Humphries did take the time to congratulate their opponents, but appeared forlorn as they quickly left the stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The England duo of Luke Littler and Luke Humphies have been dumped out of the World Cup of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[7408,75713,2000,299,1824,33939,21102,75712],"class_list":{"0":"post-184716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-darts","9":"tag-england-world-cup-darts","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-luke-humphries","14":"tag-luke-littler","15":"tag-world-cup-darts"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114683813994640620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}