The first of the semi-final games is coming up on the morrow, twixt Korea and Germany. Whoever wins will be the weakest team to make a World Cup Final since, well, ever, with the paranoid believing that the Koreans are only at this stage because of a FIFA-sponsored conspiracy involving the home team. Both teams were out-played in the quarterfinals, but got some favorable calls (Korea got some very favorable calls) from the refs to get through. I'm sorry, but I just have a hard time feeling sorry for either Spain, the U.S., or Italy; each team had plenty of other opportunities, and the fact that only the Americans haven't whined about the bad breaks they got redounds to the prestige of the "Homeland". The attacks that have come from some of the overseas papers, particularly in Spain, have bordered on the racist. Teams like Korea have been screwed so often by lousy officiating and homerism that its about time they caught a break, and one has to feel that much of the criticism now is being aimed at tomorrow morning's officials: if you so much as think of giving a German a red card, or calling offsides, a couple thousand international papers are going to label you a crook and a shill for the Koreans. In any event, the real problem in the quarterfinals wasn't bad officiating, it was the overly-defensive soccer the teams played.