Three strikes

I got three of four guesses wrong when I picked probable winners in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Thanks to Italy for not folding up and beating Ukraine or I would have ended with a lousy 0-4 record.

This is the beauty of football, guessing the winner is a tough thing to do. Who would have thought France would beat Brazil? Maybe the loyal French fans believed their team can beat the Brazilians, but not millions of other people around the world.

With the five-time champions now out of the picture, host Germany seems to have the best chance of winning the title. That is if the Germans have pulled past Italy in their semifinal game earlier today in Dortmund.

Before the pieces fell after the quarterfinals, my best guess was for a Brazil-Argentina final. I was very wrong.

The German side has not been spectacular, but has always been consistent so far. I can't say much about Italy, but then we would never know what goes on when the teams enter the pitch and play the game.

The home crowd of course is the biggest factor that has helped Germany reach this far despite being ranked only 19th in the world. This is not anymore of course the time to look at the rankings as all four teams that have reached this far have the right to be here whether they made it by pure luck or skill.

Last weekend was boys' night outs for the two males in our family - my son Nico and I. We were out with many other football fans enjoying the action and the heartaches that we got from the games.

Cielo was packed to its seams last Friday night for the Germany-Argentina game. The smoke was just too much for us to take that we decided to leave at the halftime mark and just waited the next day for the result to be reported over CNN or BBC.

The Saturday crowd was much tamer and the company of good old friends from high school made it even more pleasant.

I sat beside the team captain of our high school and collegiate volleyball team at UP Cebu during the England-Portugal match and was very surprised to see him enjoy as much as the others did. Carl Abad Bugarin, the Math genius of our class, is in town for a vacation from California.

He told me that he has also learned to love the game as both his sons play in their community league in San Jose.

We were joined by our classmates, who seem to have remained as slim and sexy as they were many years ago - Michelle Holganza-Aldemita, Laarni Enriquez-Allanic, and Cristina Pacis-Ouano. Michelle was with her husband Robert, also a certified football fan, while Tina was with her husband Tonypet.

The games are now going to be played at very unholy hours (RP time), but I'm sure there will still be a full house in many establishments. The next semifinal game will be played at 3 am tomorrow between France and Portugal, which disposed of England.

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A classmate, who is in Europe was in Germany before she went to Amsterdam. Rosemel Calderon sent us this picture showing her with some of the Ghanian fans in Cologne.