With World Cup fever cur­rent­ly reach­ing scorch­ing lev­els, you can for­give the sport­ing world for en­tire­ly for­get­ting that oth­er sports ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist. Right now, ca­su­al fans who don’t even know the off­side rule are glued to their screens, watch­ing match­es as if their lives de­pend­ed on it.

Yet, amidst the foot­balling mad­ness, it’s easy to for­get that the West In­dies qui­et­ly strolled in­to the sec­ond and fi­nal Test against Sri Lan­ka, lead­ing 1-0. They took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clinch their first home se­ries win since de­feat­ing Bangladesh 2-0 two years ago, and their first se­ries vic­to­ry over Sri Lan­ka since 2003. Con­grat­u­la­tions are firm­ly due to King Sam­my and the Test squad. Nat­u­ral­ly, his team se­lec­tion was "in­ter­est­ing" as usu­al, but we’ll un­pack that par­tic­u­lar Test Se­ries in due time.

For the ten­nis purists out there, Wim­ble­don is rapid­ly head­ing to­ward its fi­nal week­end. At the time of writ­ing, the age­less 39-year-old warhorse No­vak Djokovic just sur­vived a bru­tal, five-hour-and-15-minute five-set marathon against Félix Auger-Alias­sime (25), a man young enough to look at Djokovic’s ear­ly ca­reer high­lights in a his­to­ry text­book. He now plays an­oth­er 25-year-old, the cur­rent world num­ber one, Jan­nik Sin­ner, on Fri­day for a place in the fi­nal. The burn­ing ques­tion: can a 39-year-old's knees re­cov­er from a five-hour thriller af­ter just two days of rest? We shall see. The oth­er men’s semi­fi­nals will be be­tween the British Wild­card Arthur Fery (un­seed­ed) and the No 2 seed and French Open Cham­pi­on, Alexan­der Zverev.

In the women’s draw, my per­son­al favourites, Ele­na Ry­bak­i­na and Nao­mi Os­a­ka, packed their bags far too ear­ly. I was hop­ing Os­a­ka would at least reach the se­mi-fi­nals, as she had done the heavy lift­ing by knock­ing out top seed Ary­na Sa­balen­ka, on­ly to ex­it short­ly af­ter. The women’s draw is mag­nif­i­cent­ly open, as the four top seeds have all ex­it­ed, so the Venus Rose­wa­ter Dish is of­fi­cial­ly up for grabs. In the men’s game, I can't see any­one stop­ping the Sin­ner ma­chine, es­pe­cial­ly with Car­los Al­caraz miss­ing.

The fi­nal eight are locked in, and the biggest shock isn't who made it—it’s who didn't. Are there any sur­pris­es? I as­sume that be­fore the tour­na­ment got un­der­way, no one would have ex­pect­ed Switzer­land, and ku­dos to them. But the re­al head­line is the miss­ing gi­ant: Brazil is out. Thou­sands of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have re­luc­tant­ly fold­ed up their ca­nary-yel­low shirts and tucked them away un­til the next Co­pa Améri­ca or the 2030 World Cup. It was not to­tal­ly un­ex­pect­ed, as to be frank, the Se­leção nev­er looked right. They treat­ed Viní­cius Jr like a lone su­per­nat­ur­al sav­iour ex­pect­ed to cre­ate and score every­thing. While their de­fence was stur­dy, they sim­ply didn't bud­get for the goal-scor­ing ma­chine that is Er­ling Haa­land. The Nor­we­gian cy­borg re­mains the most lethal strik­er on the plan­et along­side Har­ry Kane.

The quar­ter­fi­nals promise to be a treat with France and Mo­roc­co kick­ing off the first game to­day at 4 pm. The French are op­er­at­ing like a lux­u­ry sports car run­ning on rock­et fu­el, just cre­at­ing chances for any­one in a blue shirt. Kylian Mbap­pé is play­ing like a man pos­sessed, as if he re­ceived ex­plic­it or­ders from the French Pres­i­dent not to dare re­turn to Paris with­out the tro­phy. His runs in­to the op­po­si­tion box have been scin­til­lat­ing, and his pass­ing and shoot­ing have been spot on. It seemed the on­ly way the Paraguay play­ers could stop him was by em­ploy­ing the Dark Arts, us­ing un­der­hand tac­tics, wrestling, hack­ing, and tac­ti­cal as­sault. It was as­ton­ish­ing that no Paraguay play­ers were cau­tioned in that match.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, jus­tice pre­vailed via a French penal­ty, who thor­ough­ly de­served their vic­to­ry, while the shame­ful Paraguay seemed to be play­ing for penal­ties. France's at­tack­ing depth is frankly ter­ri­fy­ing; when you can bring Désiré Doué and Rayan Cher­ki off the bench to sup­port Michael Olise, Bradley Bar­co­la, Kylian Mbap­pé and Ous­mane Dem­bélé, you are legal­ly clas­si­fied as a cheat code.

Mo­roc­co, in a way, is the sur­prise pack­age, but hav­ing reached the se­mi-fi­nals in the last World Cup in 2022 and re­cent­ly ‘win­ning’ the AF­CON ti­tle, they de­serve ul­ti­mate re­spect. They start­ed with an ex­cel­lent game against Brazil and on­ly seemed to get more dan­ger­ous as the tour­na­ment pro­gressed. They are well or­gan­ised de­fen­sive­ly, and when they at­tack, they do so in num­bers, es­pe­cial­ly their wing-backs, Achraf Haki­mi and Nous­sair Mazraoui, who fly up and down the wings for the en­tire 90 min­utes. Their style is sim­ple but ef­fec­tive. If they sur­vive France, they can win the whole thing—but I fear the French hur­dle is just a bit too high to clear.

Spain vs Bel­gium is an in­ter­est­ing one. Be­fore Spain met Por­tu­gal, I thought they were the on­ly force ca­pa­ble of de­rail­ing the French train. Then, they put on a drab, unin­spired per­for­mance against the Por­tuguese, luck­i­ly claw­ing a win­ning goal in the dy­ing sec­onds of the game. The tac­ti­cal blue­print seems to be: pass the ball to Lamine Ya­mal and pray he in­vents a mir­a­cle for Mikel Oyarz­a­bal. That said, Un­ai Simón is world-class, and Spain pos­sess­es ar­guably the tight­est de­fen­sive unit in the tour­na­ment.

Bel­gium, on the oth­er hand, must feel ut­ter­ly in­vin­ci­ble. Com­ing back from 2-0 down against Sene­gal with five min­utes on the clock, and then thump­ing the USA 4-1, they must be­lieve this could be their year. Their coach, Ru­di Gar­cia, pulled off a move that looked like pure in­san­i­ty—sub­bing off his two best cre­ators, Jérémy Doku and Kevin De Bruyne, when need­ing two goals. It turned out to be a stroke of ab­solute, mad-sci­en­tist ge­nius. I’m stick­ing my neck out here: Bel­gium takes this one.

Eng­land vs Nor­way is an­oth­er make-or-break game that can go ei­ther way. Eng­land sur­vived a re­lent­less Mex­i­can on­slaught, but let’s be re­al—a sharp­er elite team would have buried them. Mex­i­co was dis­ap­point­ing; they camped out in Eng­land’s de­fen­sive third, but Eng­land stood up man­ful­ly to every­thing that was thrown at them. We all know what Har­ry Kane is ca­pa­ble of, and this time, with his co-star Jude Belling­ham, they over­came the al­ti­tude, the hos­tile crowd, and los­ing Jarell Quansah to a red card. Next up is Nor­way. The Eng­lish de­fend­ers know ex­act­ly what Haa­land can do, and he is go­ing to be an ab­solute night­mare for the Eng­lish de­fence. Com­bined with Mar­tin Øde­gaard’s vi­sion, Nor­way has every­thing re­quired to pull off the up­set. Do not be shocked if the Three Li­ons are sent pack­ing.

The fi­nal quar­ter-fi­nal should the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be the most straight­for­ward fix­ture on the board. I can­not en­vi­sion an Ar­genti­na side that has clawed this far, throw­ing it all away to the Swiss. Li­onel Mes­si is at the ab­solute peak of his pow­ers. Yes, Ar­genti­na's de­fence is leak­ing like a rusty pipe—con­ced­ing two goals apiece to Cape Verde and Egypt is a glar­ing red flag that needs fix­ing im­me­di­ate­ly. How­ev­er, the Swiss sim­ply don't have the of­fen­sive am­mu­ni­tion to ful­ly ex­ploit it. I still fan­cy Ar­genti­na to win the en­tire tour­na­ment, but they must tight­en the back­line be­fore the se­mi-fi­nals turn in­to a tragedy. I am con­fi­dent they will get to the semis, and any­thing goes from there.

Keep en­joy­ing, foot­ball fans, on­ly 10 more days to go.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.