Notwithstanding the presence of star-laden teams, the ongoing football World Cup has turned out to be an edge-of-the-seat suspense thriller where picking up a clear favourite is as difficult as guessing the climax of an Agatha Christie masterpiece.
Be it the sinking of the Spanish armada - the defending champs - or the hasty exit of England and Italy, this World Cup has thrown up many a surprises.
With minnows and less-heralded teams upstaging their far more illustrious rivals, even die hard supporters are finding it difficult to stick out their neck and declare their teams to be the favourites.
A few were surprised and lot more heart broken when 'Dark Horse' Portugal, led by the Talismanic Cristiano Ronaldo, bowed out at the group stage.
Despite boasting a star-studded forward line, the Lionel Messi-commandeered Argentina were almost given a scare first by Nigeria and then by Switzerland as they managed to scrape past them. The Swiss held the much vaunted Argentine attack for 118 minutes before Real Madrid star Angel de Maria managed to score the game's solitary goal to take his team to the quarter-finals.
Playing in their own backyard and touted as the potential champions, Brazil have looked shaky as a determined Chile almost knocked them out of the tournament in the Round of 16. With the match going to penalty shootout, their custodian Julio Cesar, emerged as the hero to help Brazil sneak into the quarter-finals.
Not only Brazil, even last time runners-up Netherlands - including the dangerous trio of Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder - too had to sweat a lot to stay afloat when they faced Mexico in the last-eight encounter they won 2-1 with two goals in the last three minutes.
While the crashing out of a few bigger teams may be a disappointment, the matches going down to the wire and the tensions of watching a penalty shootout has only added to the intrigue.
The emergence of the minnows and the lesser-known teams, like Costa Rica, Cameroon and Ghana, has surely caught the imagination of the fans as the World Cup moves into the business end from July 4.
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