Welcome to Day 21 of the World Cup Delivering Absolute Drama and Thrills!!!

Day 21 of the World Cup arrived, and Rich was out of superlatives to throw at it. "The World Cup keeps on delivering. The epicness," he said, reaching for the biggest comparison he could find. "It's like every game you've ever watched in putting it in IMAX." The drama on the field is only part of it. The rest is what each result means to the countries, the fans and the players carrying them.

The night before belonged to Mexico. In front of a home crowd, Mexico beat Ecuador after a weather delay to win its first knockout-round match in 40 years, the first since 1986 against Bulgaria. Rich pulled up a photograph of the celebration in Mexico City, a drone shot of the packed square that he could only describe as nuts. That result sends Mexico onward to face England, and Rich did not undersell the stakes for the visitors. "You want to talk about an away game," he said, imagining England having to advance past Mexico in Mexico City with that scene playing out in the surrounding streets.

England earned its own place in the drama earlier in the day in Atlanta. Facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, England conceded first and then spent what felt like an eternity trying to break through a goalkeeper who, in Rich's telling, was standing on his head. He reached for hockey to describe it, invoking Dominik Hasek and Jim Craig. The breakthrough finally came from Harry Kane, one of the best goal scorers in the world, with a header and then, as Rich put it, an absolute bullet off his right foot. England advances.

From there the bracket only tightened. Rich walked through a knockout slate stacked with heavyweights. Brazil, fresh off a comeback against Japan, draws Norway and Erling Haaland at MetLife Stadium, a matchup that pulled the room into a running joke about Haaland resembling an 80s-movie villain. Canada meets Morocco in Houston. Paraguay draws France and Kylian Mbappé in Philadelphia on July 4th, a date that let Rich work in a Hamilton and Lafayette reference on behalf of the French role in the American Revolution.

Mbappé, in particular, has Rich convinced. "He looks like he's just toying with people," he said, floating the idea that Mbappé may be the best player on planet Earth right now, in any sport. He compared the ease of it to Shohei Ohtani and mused that Mbappé could finish his career with three World Cups and 30-plus goals.

The tournament's structure is what keeps pulling everyone back in. "The drumbeat of one match after another after another," Rich said, from Brazil-Norway to Mexico-England later that same day, with the possibility of Brazil looming in Miami down the line. Epic, he decided, might not even be a strong enough word for it.