South America has the edge in semi-finals

And so we come to the Word Cup semi-finals.

South America v Europe in each case. As the competition is based in South America and no European team has ever won there, it would surely be foolish to call an all-European final. But are the South American teams good enough to beat their European opposition?

The truth is that no team has glowed consistently brightly throughout the tournament.

Brazil's results have been 3-1, 0-0, 4-1, 1-1 (won on penalties), 2-1.
Germany: 4-0, 2-2, 1-0, 2-1, 1-0.
Argentina: 2-1, 1-0, 3-2, 1-0, 1-0.
Holland: 5-1, 3-2, 2-0, 2-1, 0-0 (won on penalties).

No team has lost a game (which sometimes happens. Spain, for example, lost their first game in 2010, yet went on to win the trophy). But only Argentina have won all their five games. Sometimes late in the game!

Germany and Holland both started the competition with big wins, but have not been quite as impressive of late.

Argentina and Brazil have shown, shall we say, typical South American resilience, and buoyed by huge and loud local support, I'm going to go with them to make the final.