“Mine is the real 'Hand Of God'. I made the save of the tournament:” Luis Suarez.

After the disappointment of Brazil's exit from South Africa 2010, Uruguay made sure there is to be South American representation in the final four of the World Cup. It took a penalty shoot-out and the most incredible final moments of perhaps any game of the 19 tournaments.

Now that the dust has settled, what to make of Suarez' handball? With time rapidly running out in extra-time he made a save from Adiyiah that his goalkeeper would have been proud of. As the ball pinballed around the Uruguyan box he managed to block one shot legitimately and then placed two hands on the follow-up header to keep it out. Red card. Penalty. Penalty blazed on to and over the bar. Cue wild celebrations from Suarez on the touchline.

Loses to Holland

The favorites are out. There is to be no 6th World Cup victory for Brazil this time. A second consecutive quarter-final defeat and there will surely be calls for Dunga's head. Time to pack the bags and let the inquest begin.

The build-up to the weekend was dominated by talk of the success of the South American teams. 10 wins, 4 draws and only one defeat in the group stages. For the first time ever four South American teams had reached the quarter-finals. While the Europeans flattered to deceive, the South Americans were enjoying themselves. Chile was gone, but had made many friends along the way. Now with this defeat of Brazil by Holland, it was left  to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to fly the flag for the continent.

There is to be no famous double for Maradona just yet. After winning the World Cup as captain in 1986, a ruthless German team ended his dreams of being victorious as coach. He was despondent after the game and hinted that he could walk away from his high-pressure role.

After Brazil's demise, suddenly everyone was talking up the chances of La Albicleste in the build-up to the game, but these hopes were brutally exposed on a difficult afternoon in Cape Town. It was their second consecutive World Cup quarter-final defeat to Germany and, unlike four years ago, there was no need for a penalty shoot-out to decide matters.

Tuesday, the day after Chile’s National Soccer Team lost to Brazil, ending its campaign in South Africa’s 2010 World Cup, Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the team’s lead representative and president of the National Association of Professional Soccer (ANFP), said he was “annoyed” that the team received an invitation to La Moneda from President Sebastián Piñera by way of the press.

“I understand that there are people who like this [communication] system, but I don’t like it,” Mayne-Nicholls said Tuesday morning. Hours later, Piñera spokesperson Ena Von Baer remedied the upset, extending a formal invite to La Roja, as the national team is commonly known.

Soccer - or football - was first played by the indigenous Guaraníes in what is today Paraguay, the heartland of South America, according to a report published last week in the L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper. The piece is credited to Gianpaolo Romanato.

According to Romanato, soccer was born in one of the 30 Jesuit missions, more specifically in San Ignacio Miní, during the 17th century in a region now identified as Misiones, to the south of Paraguay’s capital, Asunción.