Round of 16: Games 5-8

Italy 1-0 Australia

All I watched of this was the last couple minutes. As far as the penalty kick goes, since that's all that needs to be mentioned... was it a penalty? I don't know, it was pretty weak. But Neill did himself no favors by sprawling on the ground, thus giving the Italian player an excuse to fall over him and the referee an excuse to call obstruction. Tough spot for a penalty and a tough call, but that's what happens. Hard luck for Australia, though; they probably outplayed both Brazil and Italy, but couldn't win either match and are gone as a result.

Ukraine 0-0 Switzerland AET (Ukraine wins on penalties, 3-0)

Pretty embarrassing showing by the Swiss in the shootout - but then, I'm with Michael Davies. Shootouts may be exciting to the average fan but they're a lousy way to decide a game; it would be like ending a tied baseball game with a home run derby or a basketball game with a free throw shootout (not to go all Shep Messing on you there). The problem, as Davies notes, is that the better team does not always win the shootout (though with due respect to Switzerland, in this particular case I'm not sure that the better team didn't win); a better way to go would be to use goal differential, total goals, and qualifying record. Or something. That would also help create what FIFA wants - an exciting overtime. They tried to get that with the golden goal, but the result was that teams were even more likely to defend because if you give up a goal in that format, you don't get a chance to re-tie the game. And right now many teams won't push the ball in an OT because they're willing to take their chances in the shootout. Change the rules to a tiebreaker format and you'll find that at least one team really wants to press in extra time. Which is as it should be. Anyway, this was a fairly bland game, as the score should indicate.

Brazil 3-0 Ghana

Didn't bother. With Essien out, this was even more of a fait accompli than it would have been with him in. I guess Ronaldo got the record, and that's nice for him, but I really didn't care about the game; I'm pretty tired of watching Brazil get outplayed (as reports had them doing for, at least, significant stretches of this one) and still win. Maybe a resurgent France can finally push them to the edge.

France 3-1 Spain

Game of the round, in my opinion; certainly game of the last two days. Spain's PK was a bit shaky - for the record, I hate the rule that any infringement, no matter how minor or distant from goal, is a penalty kick as long as it's in the box, though I guess what else can you do - but it didn't end up mattering. Great goal by Ribery, proving once again that the offsides trap will almost always burn you if you're playing a team of actual quality; better goal by Zidane to finish it. That's really the moment of the World Cup for me so far, what with Zidane helping prolong his own career and scoring a great strike while he was at it. Amazingly, this was the first time Spain and France had ever met in the World Cup, and the first time both had qualified for the knockouts since 1986 (when France finished third and Spain were knocked out in the quarters). Exciting game, end-to-end action, four goals, few cards; what more could you ask for? Here's hoping the next round has more games like this and fewer games like the other three.

Another random stat: the quarters will feature two games that match up past champions: Germany/Argentina and France/Brazil. Each of those games is also a rematch of a previous final; Germany and Argentina met in 1986 and 1990 (each nation winning one), while France beat Brazil in 1998. The semifinals could easily see at least one and possibly two more matchups of former champions; if Italy beat Ukraine, they will have one with the Argentina/Germany winner (a Germany/Italy game would be a rematch of the 1982 final, as well), and if England beat Portugal, they will have one with the Brazil/France winner. The last time a World Cup had more than two matchups of former champions in the knockout stages was 1990, which saw fully six such matchups if you count the third-place game, including both semifinal games:

Round of 16: Italy 2-0 Uruguay; Argentina 1-0 Brazil
Semifinals: West Germany 1-1 England (4-3 pen); Argentina 1-1 Italy (4-3 pen)
Final: West Germany 1-0 Argentina
Third-place game: Italy 2-1 England

The Germany-England semifinal was also a rematch of the 1966 final, along with the final being a rematch of the 1986 final. Thus concludes our stats wonkery for the day.