It's down to 8

From 32 to 16, and by the time you read this it will be down to eight teams in the FIFA World Cup 2006.

The round of 16 has so far proven to be exciting despite opening with a rather ho-hum 2-0 victory by host Germany over Sweden.

The host squad will however face an acid test in the quarterfinals as they go up against Argentina, which is considered as one of the favorites to raise the World Cup trophy.

Argentina disposed of Mexico, 2-1, in a closely fought all-South American battle in the round of 16. Skipper Hernan Crespo continues to be the heart and soul of the team as he opened the scoring against Mexico.

I believe that the winner of the Germany-Argentina quarterfinal match will be in the championship game against Brazil.

The other half of this side of the bracket will have Italy and Ukraine contending for the semis slot. Both teams, I would say, are lucky to have reached this far.

Italy, thanks to the referee, salvaged a 1-0 win against the resilient Australian Socceroos via a Francesco Totti penalty on injury time.

Ukraine, which woke up after a 4-0 massacre against Spain, squeezed past Switzerland in a penalty shootout, 3-0, behind the heroics of goalkeeper Olexandr Shovkovskyi (yes, that's how his name is spelled).

Last night and early today, the bottom half of the other end of the bracket will be filled up with defending champion Brazil expected to whack African outsiders Ghana.

The other game is however expected to be very exciting as long-time rivals Spain and France clash for the right to enter the quarterfinals.

Spain has won 11 of the 27 meetings with France while the French won ten. The remaining six matches were drawn.

I pick Spain to prevail in the match, but maybe I am wrong and you already know the result as you read this piece.

The upper half of this bracket will have England clashing with Portugal, which should be a game to watch.

The English, however, have a major advantage in the game as Portugal will be missing the services of Deco, who was sent out of the game against Netherlands with a red card. England though needs to step up at this point if it is serious in its bid to end a 40-year drought in the World Cup.

This is a very strong England side, but then the pieces of the World Cup puzzle that they are trying to put together haven't fallen in place yet.

I believe it will be an exciting England versus Brazil semis for this side of the bracket.

We can never be very sure about how the matches would end though and these predictions would all be worth nothing when the stroke of ill luck will fall on the favorites.

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The 6th Copa de Golf of Casino Español de Cebu is set this Friday at the Cebu Country Club.

This tournament will be a four-man team event, but only the three best scores using the Modified Stableford Scoring System would count.

As of this writing, Nonoy Tirol, the tournament chairman, said that there are already 52 teams registered and only three more slots are still available.

Maybe by the time you pick up the phone and register, the three slots have already been filled up. The awards ceremony of the tournament promises to be a total entertainment package. That's interesting.