Now that the group stage is over and half of the FIFA Men's World Cup of soccer's teams are down to sixteen survivors, it is time for the "knockout" stage of the tournament, whereby countries face off each round in single elimination until only two are left to play the championship match. Most of the favorites in the group stage made it this far, the stunning exception being defending World Cup champion Germany, a favorite this year as well, losing their final group stage match to South Korea 2-0, with Sweden that group's surprise winner. Also unexpected, albeit not as much of a shock, was Japan surviving their group while Poland went down. Well, that's over and it's time for some more exciting high-level international soccer...starting later this morning (this article was published shortly after midnight Saturday, June 30). Here's the schedule for the eight matches in the "round of sixteen" for the next four days, with the starting times given in Eastern Daylight Time...
Saturday, June 30: FRANCE vs. ARGENTINA, 10 am
URUGUAY vs PORTUGAL, 2 PM
Sunday, July 1: SPAIN vs. RUSSIA, 10 am
CROATIA vs. DENMARK, 2 pm
Monday, July 2: BRAZIL vs. MEXICO, 10 am
BELGIUM vs. JAPAN, 2 pm
Tuesday, July 3: SWEDEN vs. SWITZERLAND, 10 am
COLOMBIA vs. ENGLAND, 2 am
Fox and Fox 1 Sports channels are showing the games live...I've enjoyed watching the World Cup so far. It's hard to tell at this point which teams will keep playing well enough to advance, but at least in the group stage Croatia, Uruguay, and Belgium have impressed me the most. Brazil should be playing better than they have, and this is doubly true with Argentina, which just barely passed the group stage. We'll see whether they can get their acts together as they face stiffer competition than ever before. I'm a bit disappointed in the matchups this week...I wanted both Brazil and Mexico to advance far into the tournament: instead they're playing each other. The same is true for Colombia and England. The one team I'd really like to get booted out the most is Russia, the automatic entry because it is the host nation. Nothing personal...and I really love the Russian language, music to my ears whenever I hear it...but it's bad enough that this country, which has been interfering in our politics while threatening or invading its neighbors, is getting all this free positive publicity...
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