“I think Wayne Rooney should go back to the Manchester United training ground and stick one on Ronaldo” – Alan Shearer So begins the vilification of Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo after his country defeated England on Saturday. While Shearer’s sentiment has been expressed in both thoughtful and vulgar terms in some comments on this site, is [...]

And then there were four. We’ve worked our way down from 32 teams to just four, each a mere two wins away from lifting the World Cup trophy in Berlin on July 9. Some of you nailed your quarterfinals predictions from last week, while others were off the mark. The vast majority [...]

We’re liveblogging the full 90 of the England and Portugal quarter-final match. You can join us by coming in and leaving your comments before, during and after the match. Pregame: England 0-0 Portugal 30 minute countdown: Portugal will be without midfielders Deco and Costinha due to card suspension. Cristiano Ronaldo is back from injury and [...]

With a pair of games today featuring some of the planet’s more storied teams, I can’t help to think back to World Cup tournaments gone by. I’m a bit of a sentimentalist that way. With the rapidly expanding use of video on the Internet, it is becoming easier and easier to get my [...]

Yesterday we saw Germany play Argentina, two teams linked together by World Cup history. Today we will see a similar historical tie with Brazil playing France in a rematch of the 1998 final, as well as England playing Portugal, two teams that squared off in the 1966 semifinal. It is that match, and [...]

The German capital is the epicenter of the universe today. At least that is true if you are part of the more than one billion people who will watch Argentina play Germany in Berlin and since you are reading this blog I’m wagering you’re going to be one of those billion that tune in today. [...]

Before the World Cup began, most oddsmakers had Brazil, Germany, Argentina, England and Italy as the top picks to win it all. Indeed, each of those teams is still alive and just three wins away from lifting the trophy in Berlin on July 9. While the games between the powerhouses that lie ahead will [...]

The BBC has taken player ratings as submitted by viewers and put together a Team of the Tournament. They limit the team to players who are still left in the competition and who have made at least three appearances. The results are quite interesting. The Beeb readers see it this way: Shovkovskiy (Ukr) Ayala (Arg), [...]

The eight teams that are in the quarter-finals of this year’s World Cup bring a lot of history and tradition to the competition. They also have been involved in some of the more memorable games in World Cup history. All of this makes for some delicious potential match ups for the final. One [...]

After some not so great predictions in the first round, we rebounded nicely picking 6 of the 8 remaining teams. How did you do? Here are your predictions from before the tournament, as well as after the first round. Whether you guessed wrong or right you still have time to redeem yourself by [...]