As the World Cup draws to a close, there is no room for other football…fairy tales. Favorites are easy or hard to impose, and romances land in reality.

As of yesterday, Brazil and Croatia are the other two teams that have reached the quarterfinals. They have overcome obstacles from the Far East (Japan, South Korea) and now we have three highly competitive couples (Holland-Argentina, England-France, Brazil-Croatia) that will be thrown into the fight on Friday and Saturday.

With Pelé in mind, Seleção did the magic and beat South Korea 4-1 (7′ Vinicius, 13′ Neymar (pen.), 29′ Richarlison, 36′ Paque – 76′ Ho), “cleaning” match from the first half and the achievement of the eighth consecutive entry into the “8” of the World Cup.

One goal was better than the other in terms of creativity, imagination and execution of the Brazilians, who were holding their own in the second half ahead of the quarter-final against the Croats.

Morocco-Spain and Portugal-Switzerland will form the last pair of the quarter-finals today.

Croatia, in a remake of their previous knockout meetings in the tournament’s history, beat Japan on penalties (3-1, 1-1 on aggregate and after extra time), and Dominik Livakovic became the hero who won three, reminiscent of Daniel Subašić, who with his three saves against Denmark at the World Cup in Russia led Khvatskaya to the quarterfinals. It was the seventh time in the last eight elimination games in a major tournament that a match went into overtime. Former AEK ace Marko Livaya missed the penalty, but it didn’t cost Croatia, who saw Japan take the lead in the 44th minute thanks to Maeda. However, she was better in the second half, she equalized with Perišić in the 55th minute and could take the lead with Modrić in the 63rd minute and Perišić in the 77th minute.

Today, the quarter-final puzzle ends with the last two matches of the 1/8 finals, where it will be seen whether one of the outsiders (Morocco, Switzerland) can arrange a surprise. The program opens with the match Morocco-Spain (17.00) and ends with the game Portugal-Switzerland (21.00).

• According to Marca, Cristiano Ronaldo has signed a partnership deal with Al-Nasr of Saudi Arabia, of whom he will officially become a player on 1 January. At the same time, Fernando Santos made it clear that he did not like the reaction of CR7 during his substitution against South Korea and left open the possibility of giving the armband to someone else in today’s match.