The “knockout” round of 16 at the World Cup begins today. In a few minutes South Korea will play Uruguay. Uruguay is favored to win, but South Korea is extremely fit and played well together as a team in the early round. The winner of that match will meet the winner of the U.S. vs Ghana, which takes place this afternoon (central time). Ghana happens to be the team that ended our World Cup in 2006.

From the commentary I heard yesterday, no team is strongly favored in the U.S./Ghana match. The crowd will probably be mostly cheering for Ghana, as they are the only African team to advance to the knockout round. Ivory Coast is considered the best African team, but they had a very tough break at this World Cup, ending up in the “group of death” with Brazil and Portugal. South Africa just barely missed out on advancing to the knockout stage.

The best-ever showing for the U.S. at a World Cup was in 2002, when we advanced to the round of 8. We have a lucky draw this year, because as strong as Uruguay and South Korea are, we have a much better chance against them in a quarter-final than we would again, say, Brazil or Spain or Germany.

The biggest surprise for me in this World Cup is that France and Italy both failed to advance out of the group stage. Those two teams met in the championship game four years ago.

Share any World Cup thoughts in this thread, and check out Tanya Keith’s “Soccer…Family Style” blog for a view from the ground in South Africa. If you like watching sports in large groups, here are some places in the Des Moines area to watch the World Cup.

UPDATE: Missed this morning’s match, but my family watched Uruguay beat South Korea 2-1. Watching the U.S.-Ghana match now. We got outplayed in the first half but almost scored at the start of the second half, so maybe some magic will happen.

LATE UPDATE: Disappointing outcome, but you can’t say Ghana didn’t deserve to win that game. The U.S. had many chances in the second half to score the winning goal after Landon Donovan equalized with that penalty kick. You can’t expect to win at the World Cup without converting the kind of opportunities we had. Then we let Ghana get the jump on us in the extra time. Maybe team USA will have better luck in Brazil in 2014.