Well, what interesting semi-finalists we have. Spain, pre-tournament favourites have flattered to deceive yet David Villa has practically dragged them through to their (inexplicably) first-ever World Cup semi-final with five goals, mostly brilliant, when most of his team-mates, notably Fernando Torres and Gerard Pique have looked decidedly off-colour. Back-to-back 1-0 wins over Portugal and Paraguay have done the trick for La Furia Roja but they are about to face their trickiest test yet. The Germans, yet again, have shone despite being overlooked by many before the tournament. They destroyed England 4-1 then went one better and exposed Diego Maradona's sorry excuse for a defence with a 4-0 win over the Argentines. Maradona's decisions to leave out the likes of Barcelona's Gabriel Milito and Inter's Javier Zanetti look even more foolish than they already did now. The emergence of Mesut Oezil and Thomas Mueller have been instrumental to the sudden flow of German goals. Added to the incredibly prolific Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski and it's incredible the Germans weren't thought of as real contenders at the start of the tournament. Yes, neither of those strikers have been great for club lately but both do the trick for country. Perhaps England could take note, Peter Crouch has similarly performed better for country than club but he wasn't given a sniff by Fabio Capello in South Africa. Joachim Lowe has succeeded where Capello failed in drilling his team tactically and ensuring every player knows their exact role in the system, a 4-2-3-1 which seems to be the vogue formation of the World Cup, again England could take note...
In the other semi-final the Dutch will be fancying their chances. Fresh from beating Brazil, the brilliant club form of Wesley Sneijder and Arjen Robben seems to have continued into the World Cup, where others (Rooney, Messi, Ronaldo) have all stumbled. Combined with an effective Dirk Kuyt and Robin Van Persie(the only one who is perhaps not quite firing yet) in another 4-2-3-1 formation, the Oranje would appear to have their best chance of claiming a first ever World Cup. An astonishing thought when considering the legends the Dutch have had at their disposal down the years: Johan Cruyff, Johnny Rep, Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Kluivert, Ruud Van Nistelrooy...Not one has lifted the World Cup. But then, nor has Spain, so we have two chances of witnessing a new world champion this year.
Somewhat surprisingly, Uruguay, the underdogs of the last four, already have two World Cups in the bag, albeit from way back in 1930, the inaugural tournament, and 1950, the first post-war tournament. Luis Suarez has received much abuse for his own 'hand of god' incident but really, I defy anyone to do differently in that situation, where if he didn't act his team were certainly out of the World Cup. By making the handball, Suarez made the sizeable sacrifice of missing a possible semi-final as well as missing the penalty shoot-out (where he would have been a key-taker) while still handing Ghana a very good chance to win by scoring a penalty. No, Ghana only have themselves to blame after Asamoah Gyan, previously impressive throughout, bottled the all important penalty kick. Uruguay then won the shoot-out fair and square, Sebastien Abreu with a sublime 'Panenka' style kick to round things off. However, without Suarez, the Uruguayans will be up against it on Tuesday night, and much will be required of Diego Forlan who has scored three goals so far and like Sneijder and Robben continued his club form of the past season, where he scored winning goals past both Liverpool and Fulham to lead Atletico Madrid to Europa League glory.
Personally, I believe the Dutch will just have too much quality for the last South American team in the tournament, and that the Germans' form will just be enough to edge out the Spaniards, who aren't quite firing as well as they were expected. However, in this World Cup anything can happen as we've seen so far with some bizarre results and Messrs Forlan and Muslera for Uruguay, and Villa and Casillas for Spain in particular will be looking to see their countries into the final next Sunday. The feast of football goes on, with the final only seven days away! Oh yeah, and the third place-play off the night before, if anyone's interested? Anybody?
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