Germany is the team to beat as the World Cup comes down to four contenders, with Spain, The Netherlands and Uruguay looking to find a way to beat a German team that has peaked at just the right time.
With 13 goals in five games, Germany has dispatched Argentina and England with comfort, scoring four each time, while the three others have been less impressive.
At the end of the first round, South American teams were set to dominate the competition. All but one have dropped out, with favorites Brazil falling to the well-organized Dutch.
Uruguay meet the Dutch on Tuesday and European champion Spain faces three-time World Cup winner Germany on Wednesday for places in the final.
The Europeans and South Americans are level 9-9 after 18 World Cups so one of them is guaranteed to edge ahead in the July 11 final at Soccer City
On current form that looks like a Netherlands-Germany confrontation, a meeting of two neighbors who also met in the 1974 final when the Germans won on home soil.
Germany outplayed Argentina 4-0 in Cape Town Saturday with Miroslav Klose scoring twice to take his tally from three World Cups to 14. Now he has two more games to beat the all time record of 15 by Brazil's Ronaldo.
The Germans, who have not won the title since 1990, also hit four against Australia and England and are looking ominously good.
``What the team showed, it was not only international level, but the level of champions,'' coach Joachim Loew said after his team had swept aside one of the competition favorites. ``It was absolute class.''
Supremely well organized and devastating on the counter-attack, Germany has blended experience and youth to great effect. While 20-year-old Thomas Mueller has added three goals to 32-year-old Klose's four, 21-year-old Mesut Oezil dovetails neatly in midfield with the experienced Bastian Schweinsteiger and the whole side has a consistent, solid look.
Spain, by contrast, has stumbled on the way to the last four, edging past Paraguay 1-0 in the quarterfinal on Saturday after both teams missed penalties.
The Spaniards also lost their opening game to Switzerland and Vicente del Bosque's team, though little changed from the one that won Euro 2008 so convincingly, bares little resemblance to that lineup.
With Fernando Torres in poor form and Xavi Hernandez struggling to recapture his high standards, David Villa has helped the team through with five goals. If the Spaniards can't lift their game in the semifinal, the Germans look a good bet to go through to a record eighth final.
At one stage a South American sweep of the semifinals was a strong possibility with four nations in the last eight and all facing different teams.
With Brazil and Argentina going out in the quarterfinal, however, Uruguay - a 100-1 shot when the tournament began - is left to try and take the title back to South America and has a tough task ahead in Cape Town.
The Dutch take on Uruguay at Green Point Stadium in what will feel like a home game.
On top of the 5,000 or so Dutch fans who have traveled to the World Cup, there are 20,000 compatriots who have settled in the south-west coast city over the generations. Although they may not all have tickets, they will be cheering the team on in the bars and squares.
``We hear that the euphoria back home is incredible and it's a shame that we cannot experience it,'' said Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk, whose team knocked out five-time champion Brazil 2-1 on Friday.
The Dutch sent striker Robin van Persie and defender Joris Mathijsen to hospital for scans on injuries Saturday. Van Persie injured his left arm during the game against Brazil and Mathijsen reported a right knee problems during the warmup and pulled out of the game.
Both teams will definitely be without two players each through suspension.
The Dutch won't have midfielder Nigel de Jong and defender Gregory van der Wiel because they have collected two yellow cards in the tournament. The same applies to Uruguay defender Jorge Fucile while striker Luis Suarez, who has been one of the stars of the competition, is also banned for a straight red card awarded when he deliberately blocked the ball with his hands on his goalline in the final minute of extra time against Ghana.
Coach Oscar Tabarez, whose team has reached this for for the first time since 1970, denied that Suarez action was cheating. But the incident took some of the gloss away from Uruguay's impressive revival under a coach who also guided the team in 1990 and returned for his second spell in 2006.
``It's beautiful,'' he said. ``It's difficult to take in what's happened. We are just very happy.
``I don't know whether this is the rebirth of Uruguayan football. It could be as long as we don't go another 20 years or so without getting to this stage.''
With Suarez out, the veteran coach has to reshape his attack and either rely on the in-form Diego Forlan and Edinson Cavani or add another striker.
