Olympic Soccer 2016: Men's Quarterfinal Results and Semifinal Schedule

After an exciting and surprising day of women's soccer action in Rio de Janeiro Friday, the men took to the pitch Saturday with four spots in the semifinals on the line.Chief among those set to compete in quarterfinal play was host Brazil, led by superstar Neymar. Brazil entered the tournament as the favorite due to the home-crowd advantage and the presence of Neymar, but other top soccer-playing nations such as Germany, Portugal and Colombia looked to improve their medal chances as well.With group play officially in the books, here is a full rundown of Saturday's quarterfinal clashes, along with a recap of how each tilt reached its conclusion.Saturday ResultsSemifinal ScheduleGermany 4-0 PortugalGermany's march toward its first Olympic medal in men's soccer since 1988 continued impressively Saturday, as it dominated Portugal 4-0 to advance to the semifinals and guarantee the opportunity to play for a medal.The match was scoreless for nearly the entire first half despite the Germans carrying the play, but that changed in the first minute of stoppage time when Arsenal's Serge Gnabry scored his Olympic-leading sixth goal to put them on top.It was all Germany from there, as Matthias Ginter, Davie Selke and Philipp Max added second-half goals to put an exclamation point on Die Mannschaft's convincing triumph.As pointed out by MetrocontributorJan Hagen, Germany had a huge advantage over Portugal in terms of its players having experience on the big international stage:Hagen also added that Portugal was blocked from fielding its best possible team:Despite the fact that it won't have an opportunity to play for an Olympic medal, 2016 can't be considering anything less than a success for Portuguese soccer due to its unexpected Euro 2016 victory.With a remarkable 19 goals in four matches, Germany has to be considered the gold-medal favorite entering the semifinals.Conceding goals was a bit of a problem in its first two matches, but the Germans have now manufactured back-to-back shutouts and are in ideal form.If Gnabry continues his stellar play in particular, Germany is in great position to win its first-ever Olympic gold in men's soccer, East Germany in 1976 notwithstanding.Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.
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