"It's going to be James Garner against Germany in the final round."

The USA was eliminated yesterday by Ghana. Take a moment and let that sink in...


Okay. Enough of that. Now that the inevitable has happened, we can focus on the Dutch. (Well, okay, a little more about the Americans.) For the US to stay in the Cup, the Americans had to beat Ghana, and Italy had to beat the Czechs. One of these two things happened. Italy shut out the Czechs 2-0, but the US couldn't hold up our part of the bargain and we lost 2-1.

So with the knowledge that most of my country still didn't know that we were even in a tournament, I tuned over to the last minutes of Netherlands v Argentina. I would have watched the whole thing, but other people in my household do not understand the importance of soccer to my pathetic life and I was doing errands for injured people. Anyway, turns out I didn't have to watch the whole thing, because the last 15 minutes diagrammed the other 75 in that nothing happened. Just a scrabble at midfield. Except the Dutch kept bunching and the Argentinians had multiple chances to score and fucked it up. A commentator described it as staring at already dry paint in the hopes it would dry a little more.

Brazil powered over Japan 4-1. Is anyone surprised? No. It will be Brazil v Germany, final round.

Croatia and Australia tied. I think this means that Australia advances. I can't say much about this match because I can't watch them all. So imagine the excitement of another tie.

Right now, Ukraine is beating Tunisia 1-0 and Spain is beating Saudi Arabia 1-0.
Switzerland v Korea and Togo v France has not started yet.