Bye, Bye Uruguay.

Today at the World Cup saw the very rare event of an empty bracket when Columbia faced no opposition in their last 16 knock-out match. As is standard when a team forfeits a game by failing to attend Columbia were awarded a 2-0 victory and will progress into to the next round.

Sadly Uruguay didn't even have the decency to do that and not only turned up for the game but also brought all their dirty tricks along in an effort to actually win the game. So for example at his press conference yesterday Uruguay's head coach Oscar Washington Tabarez refused to answer any questions and instead gave a 12 minute speech blaming Luis Suarez's ban on the media rather Suarez's biting of Italy's Giorgio Chiellini. Although as far I can tell no-one has bothered to translate what I gather was a very rambling performance into English I suspect Tabarez was trying to suggest that I was only being so harsh in my criticism of the Uruguayan team because I was upset that they'd beaten Italy.

As such I should point out that while as a neutral it's more fun to pick a team while watching a match I would have been perfectly happy to see Uruguay beat Italy if they'd played the better football or even attempted to play football rather than physically assaulting the Italian players. I might even have been happy if the referee had even considered picking the Uruguayan players up on their violent conduct rather then making it so blatantly obvious that he was rigging the game in order to award victory to Uruguay.

The much more sinister element of Uruguay's mind games in recent days have been the attempts to circulate an entirely false story that there was some sort of conspiracy against them when clearly nothing could be further from the truth. The intention here was to intimidate the referee into not issuing yellow and red cards against the Uruguayan players as they set about their usual game plan of kicking, stamping on and body-checking their opponents into submission.

Sadly this seems to have had some effect with Björn Kuipers - the Dutch referee - seeming very hesitant to punish any Uruguayan player for their multiple infractions. For example in the 77th minute Uruguay's Christian Stuani kicked Columbia's Pablo Armero up the a*rse while the ball wasn't even in play. The referee's response was to book Armero for time wasting. Fortunately that incident aside for the most part the referee was equally lenient on Columbia's players although as they were more disciplined they never quite achieved Uruguay's level of brutality. This was of course in direct contrast to the Italy game during which I'm pretty sure Marco Rodríguez - the referee - seriously contemplated booking Chiellini for being bitten by Suarez.

Fortunately a type of poetic justice was done when Columbia's James Rodríguez put them 1-0 up with a stunning volley from outside the penalty area in the 28th minute. Rodríguez netted at second in the 50th minute with a goal that puts him in the lead of the golden boot contest but I pretty sure his first has already won the goal of the tournament award.

2-0 was how it ended so the only thing that Uruguay achieved by turning up to play the game was to lose whatever dignity they had left. Columbia can feel a little aggrieved that they were robbed of the chance of beating Italy. After all Italy may be stylish but they lack speed and attacking bite. Those are two things Columbia has in spades.

The other match of the day between the hosts Brazil and their near neighbours Chile was sadly dominated entirely by the referee. That referee was Britain's Howard Webb who you may remember also made a complete mess of the 2010 World Cup final by failing to keep the Dutch players in line.

The main problem has been this FIFA guidance to referees advising them to be lenient when handing out red and yellow cards. Despite all my complaints about Uruguay I actually fully support this guidance because it has largely improved the games. The reason why it has been issued is that if a player is sent off in a match it completely ruins the game with one side being forced to play at a disadvantage. It also means that the player is automatically banned from the next match and the same thing is true if a player picks up two yellow cards. With the tournament only coming around every four years it can be heartbreaking when players are forced to miss matches. As a result if players are worried that the referee is going to hand out cards for every infraction - no matter how accidental - they stop taking risks and this makes for some really boring games.

The other extreme of that though is that if players know that the referee is not going to issue a card no matter what they do they just start cheating which not only risks players being seriously injured but can absolutely kill off a game. This is what started to happen in the USA V Germany game when Beckerman and Bradley realised they weren't going to be booked so started shoving the German players around just to break up the play. Fortunately things settled down a bit when Beckerman was finally shown a yellow card.

Howard Webb's main problem is that he doesn't seem to understand the thinking behind FIFA's advice so appears to have taken "shown leniency" to mean "don't show any cards in the first half." As a result the first half of the Brazil V Chile game was a very scrappy affair with lots of little kicks and digs along with what looked like a deliberate plan to take Brazil's Neymar out of the game by injuring him. So although there was lots of end to end play with countless attacks and counter attacks none of these seemed organised enough to actually be going somewhere. As such David Luis' goal which put Brazil 1-0 up after 18 minutes came for a set piece while Alexis Sánchez' equaliser for Chile in the 32nd minute was largely the result of Brazil seeming to forget that they needed to mark players and generally attempt to defend their goal.

I think Webb's two key mistakes in the first half actually came within two minutes of each other. In the 29th minute Chile's Arturo Vidal clattered into Brazil's Neymar with a body-check that wouldn't have looked out of place in an ice hockey game. Although Webb did award a free kick he failed to take any further action against Vidal. Given that there was little to no attempt to play the ball and a strong suspicion of malicious intent I would have shown Vidal a yellow card. The leniency would have come from not showing him a red card and sending him straight off.

In the 31st minute Brazil's Fernandinho fouled Chile's Marcelo Díaz. As this was just a foul Webb reasonably only awarded a free kick. However 16 seconds later Fernandinho fouled Chile's Alexis Sánchez which struck me as a clear sign that he'd started to think that he could get away with anything. As such Webb should have immediately booked him and I think his failure to do so was the moment the game really started getting away from the referee. Webb seemed to immediately realise this and his decision to book Chile's Francisco Silva for a nothing foul on Neymar seemed like a desperate attempt to regain control by randomly booking the next player who came into contact with Neymar.

During the half-time break Webb no doubt found out that not only was I criticising him on Twitter but so many people were criticising him on Twitter that his name had been trending worldwide throughout the first half. As a result Webb started the second half clearly in the mood to stamp his authority on the game and show that he wasn't afraid to make tough decisions.

This blew up in his face almost immediately when Hulk put Brazil 2-1 up in the 55th minute only for Webb to disallow the goal for hand ball - an offence that he proceeded to book Hulk for. If you watch the replays the ball actually hits Hulk on the shoulder but given the size of a football it also catches part of his upper arm. As it would be unreasonable to ask Hulk to chop his arm off while running for the ball and there was no malicious intent this wasn't hand ball. What I think confused the assistant referee (Mike Mullarkey, also British) who instructed Webb to disallow the goal was the movement of Hulk's forearm which in real time appeared to swing in to make contact with the ball although slow motion replays confirm that it didn't.

That is why in his little conversation with his assistant and the players Webb taps each of his forearms. As such rather then being wholly sure - which he needed to be - that Hulk had intentionally handled the ball Webb only appears to have an extremely limited understanding of why his assistant was suggesting that there may have been a handball offence. This uncertainty was revealed by the way that throughout the rest of the match Webb made a point of awarding free kicks and issuing cards to Brazil players in order to prove that he wasn't trying to correct his mistake of disallowing the goal. After all Webb didn't know enough about why he'd disallowed the goal even entertain the idea that he might have made a mistake.

With the referee appearing to completely lose touch with reality the game continued in a sort of stunned silence. This led to it going into 30 minutes of extra-time and - although Chile's Mauricio Pinilla nearly won the game when he hit the cross bar in the 120th minute - a penalty shoot-out. Amid the usual heart-wrenching drama Brazil eventually won that shoot-out 3-2.

As such Brazil will face Columbia in the first quarter-final which due to scheduling issues will actually be played second on July 4th.

23:30 on 28/6/14 (UK date).