Mid Quarter Final update

First two quarter final games were not high quality and I'm not sure that the better team won. It just shows that in the World Cup experience and tradition carry extra weight.

Germany is on a current streak of 16 consecutive top 8 finishes. The next based all time is Brazil with 6 (also current). Next all time is Switzerland (yes, the Swiss finished in the top 8 in 1934, 1938, 1950 and 1954). The next longest current streak is Argentina with 3. The only other team with a current such steak is the Netherlands which have done it in 2010 and 2014.

Even more remarkable in my view is the fact that this is the 4th consecutive semi-final for Germany (2nd, 3rd, 3rd, ???). Other than Brazil which made it to the Finals three times in a row (1994-2202) not other team has made it to the Semis more than twice in a row. This matchup also assures us that for the 19th time either Brazil of Germany will finish in the top 3. Brazil 9 time and Germany a record 11 (1970 & 2002 Brazil won and Germany finished 3rd & 2nd respectively). Twice more, both finished in the top 4, 1958 when Brazil won and Germany lost to France and 1974 when Germany won and Brazil lost to Poland.

So this is the 5th time in which both will finish in the top 4 and the other four times Brazil won the WC three time, Germany once and the rest of the world none.

So far only two countries played over 100 World Cup games - Germany with 104 and Brazil with 102. They have faced each other once!!! In the 2002 final. This Tuesday July 8th will be the second time. To put this in perspective, the other extreme is Sweden with a total of 46 games and 7 of them (over 15%) are against Brazil (0:2:5). Even Chile with only 33 games has faced Brazil 4 times in the knock-out rounds and have been eliminated all four times (0:1:3). Even Turkey with a grand total of 10 WC games has faced both Brazil & Germany twice.

With Neymar's Injury I think that the celebrations in Rio tonight were premature. The Brazil - Colombia game was one of the worst reffing jobs I have seen for many many years and there was not a single so called "big" mistake. Just an extremely poor job of player management, foul identification and (no) card selection. A major injury was just waiting to happen.