Okay, come on. Were you watching yesterday? Belgium knocking out Brazil 2-1, with some great goalkeeping and an astounding fast-break, pitch-long counterattack? France beating the imposing, usually dominant Uruguay 2-0? The 2018 World Cup has become such a wide-open, wild-west affair that anything can happen, and, in many ways, already has. The list of toppled giants and dispatched favorites, by now, is so long that of all the teams still standing, only two of them have won a single World Cup in their country’s history: France, yesterday advanced to the semifinals, and England, which today faces Sweden in the first of two quarterfinal games televised by Fox. France won its one and only World Cup 20 years ago, in 1998, by defeating Brazil. England won its one and only World Cup 32 years before that, beating West Germany, in 1966 – the same year England’s biggest band, The Beatles, stopped touring. But in its most game, against the powerful Colombia, England buried its own penalty-shootout curse by winning on penalty kicks, so the team still stands… and has increasingly possible dreams of reaching another World Cup final. The first stop, and it’s a big step, is Sweden vs. England, televised at 10 a.m. ET (Sweden coming off a thrilling 1-0 victory over Switzerland), followed at 2 p.m. ET by Russia vs. Croatia. Host nation Russia, which beat the heavily favored Spain on penalty kicks to make the quarterfinals, is by far the darkest horse left in this race – but it has home-crowd advantage. And if Vladimir Putin can meddle with a U.S. presidential election, surely it’s not unreasonable to imagine him finding a way into the World Cup’s VAR instant replay review booth to influence a call or two…