I was mostly busy with other stuff, so I missed the one-sided thrashings that were the Copa America quarterfinals. The results were no surprise, but the scorelines certainly were: 6-0 for Brazil, 6-1 for Mexico.

But the semifinals... these are going to be great matches, just because of the history.

Perhaps the best match of the 2006 World Cup, yes, just last year, was Argentina vs. Mexico. Mexico took the lead, but Argentina equalized to send it to overtime, where Maxi Rodriguez scored the goal of the tournament to send Argentina to the quarterfinals. The game was good enough that some promoter organized rematches in the U.S. this year for profit, but this game, no friendly, this will be the rematch. That's Wednesday's game.

Tuesday, the history is deeper. American soccer fans like to think of 1950 as the World Cup where we beat England. But the rest of the world remembers it for the final match, where Uruguay stunned Brazil in front of an estimated 200,000 fans in the Maracana (it sounds impossible, but think of what safety standards were like in 1950 in Brazil) in Rio de Janeiro. It was the last great strike for the country that dominated international soccer in the first half of the 20th Century, and no Uruguayan will ever forget it. Brazil looks past Uruguay to Argentina for their rival, but Uruguay looks at Brazil. The Uruguayans will want this. Brazil is, like in 1950, heavily favored, but could get caught looking past them to the final.

This poll at CopaAmerica.com, http://www.copaamerica.com/... , shows how far Brazil is favored. 87 percent of fans expect Brazil to advance, but Argentina has only a slight edge over Mexico. The passion will ignite for these games, no doubt about it.

Across the Pacific, Asia is just starting up its championships, which, interestingly, are being held in four separate countries -- Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The dual-hosting of the World Cup was... well, not a disaster, but had issues. Hosts automatically qualify, so having the World Cup in both Japan and South Korea meant two spots to them, and then the rest of Asia demanded even more, threatening what would have been the first boycott over berth allocation since 1966, when Asia and Africa were given a combined one spot, and all the African countries boycotted. It worked well enough for Euro 2000, apparently, because Europe is doing it again in 2008, which I guess is okay because there are no politics in assigning berths. Anyway, I'm way off topic here.

Asia has four groups. Three are straightforward, with one recent World Cup team: Australia (which just moved from Oceania) heads Group A, Japan Group B, Iran Group C. Group D is where it gets interesting: Saudi Arabia and South Korea, who've both appeared in the last four World Cups (something not many countries can claim), plus Bahrain, which narrowly lost a playoff against Trinidad and Tobago for a 2006 berth. Barring major upsets, the first three groups are not worth paying attention to, but Group D, and the quarterfinals they're drawn into, will be fascinating to watch. ROK vs. KSA is Tuesday.