Fighting for the right to head to Florida and compete in the Copa America final, Uruguay and Colombia clash in a mouthwatering semi-final at the Bank of America Stadium in North Carolina on Thursday (6:00 am Bangladesh time).
While Marcelo Bielsa's men needed the lottery of a penalty shootout to edge out Brazil, the clinical Colombians smashed five past a beleaguered Panama without reply in the quarter-finals.
Enhancing their reputation as one of the meanest defences South America has to offer, Uruguay kept Brazil off the scoresheet for 120 minutes of their quarter-final encounter even after suffering a pair of devastating blows at the back.
While Uruguay failed to keep Panama off the scoresheet in their Copa opener, a captivating Colombia outfit ran into no such defensive difficulties in their quarter-final showdown, striking five times through five different scorers to storm into the final four.
James Rodriguez, Jhon Cordoba, Luis Diaz, Richard Rios and Miguel Borja all played their direct part in a 5-0 annihilation in Arizona, which saw Nestor Lorenzo's men either match or break multiple national team records, including their biggest-ever margin of victory in a Copa America match.
In addition, the tremendous Tricolour are now on a 27-game unbeaten streak across all tournaments since losing to Argentina in a February 2022 World Cup qualifier, and should they prevail on Wednesday and reach the final, they will set a new record for their longest-ever sequence without defeat.
Colombia's 10-game victorious streak may have been snapped in their final group-stage draw with Brazil, but that 1-1 represents the most minor of minor blots on the Tricolour notebook, and they have now progressed to the semi-finals in three of the last four Copa Americas.
