After a few weeks of precise play, sudden-death shootouts and, of course, expert diving, the World Cup is down to its final four teams.
Brazil, Germany, Argentina and the Netherlands will slug it out for global futbol supremacy.
And what better way to know a nation than through its pop culture?
To prepare for this week’s games, enjoy some random trivia about each nation.
Brazil
Brazilians apparently love Disney — perhaps because Walt Disney visited there in 1941 with a group of his animators.
In 2012, 35.7 percent of Brazilians arriving in the US flew into Orlando, home of Disney World. A full 20 percent of all tourists arriving in Orlando were Brazilian.
The personal cassette recorder was invented in Brazil. In 1972 Andreas Pavel developed the Stereobelt, a portable music player that would go on to change how people listened to music.
Seven years later, Sony began selling its Walkman, which was similar to what Pavel had patented.
The two parties fought each other in court before eventually reaching a settlement.
The popularity of Brazil’s bossa nova style of music exploded in the late 1950s and 1960s. A version of “The Girl from Ipanema” by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto even hit the top of the American charts in 1964.
After an oppressive regime came to power in Brazil, bossa nova, with its sunny lyrics and laid-back vibe, fell out of favor. By the late 1960s, its popularity had faded.
Germany
Die Fantastischen Vier, a Stuttgart group founded in the mid-1980s, was among the first to rap in German. They had a big hit in Europe with 1992’s “Die da.”
Oddly, Germany is the birthplace of the garden gnome. The first were displayed in green spaces across the country sometime in the 1800s.
Germany’s answer to the Kardashians is the Geiss family, a wealthy clan that stars in a German reality show called “Die Geissens — Eine schrecklich glamouröse Familie!” Translation: A terribly glamorous family.
Robert Geiss is a former sportswear company owner with a blond mullet. His wife, Carmen, is a former “Miss Fitness” title winner. Their two children attend school in Monaco. The show began in 2011 and is still running.
Argentina
The country apparently likes a good cry. At the end of June, the top movie at the box office was the cancer story “The Fault in Our Stars.”
That’s one way to get ratings up. In 2011, a contestant on the Argentine equivalent of “Dancing With the Stars” got completely naked on live TV during a routine.
Cinthia Fernández pulled off her top and G-string during the sexy dance, then had her partner pour red wine over her. The performance was investigated by the government.
The animated feature originated in Argentina. “El Apóstol,” a satirical film about Argentine president Hipólito Yrigoyen, was released in 1917.
It was written and directed by Quirino Cristiani and had a 70-minute run time. No prints of the film exist any longer.
Netherlands
In 2009, a Dutch woman named Patricia Paay became the oldest Playboy Playmate ever when she stripped down at age 60.
We can thank the Dutch for chocolate as we mostly consume it today. In the 1820s, Casparus van Houten came up with a method for pressing the fat from a cocoa bean, then pulverizing it. The result was cocoa powder.
About the only Dutch band to make it in America was Golden Earring. The rock group was formed in the Hague in 1961 and went on to produce a couple dozen albums.
Stateside, however, they were and shall forever remain a two-hit wonder: for 1973’s “Radar Love” and the 1982 MTV fave “Twilight Zone.”