I feel a bit like this is my other other team.

People who know me can attest that I have been saying for 20 years that if I disappear one day, I probably have taken an assumed name and most likely can be found on the terrace of a cantina in San Jose, capital of Costa Rica. Spending almost nothing to live, and hoping to be off the radar. Just because it’s fun to be off the radar. And because Costa Rica apparently is a nice place for Americans to retire. Country doesn’t even have an army.

So, I am very proud of the Ticos, Concacaf’s third-best team, generally, for reaching the final eight, considering they were thought quite unlikely to escape what some called the Group of Death (though Americans preferred to think it was their group).

Costa Rica defeated Uruguay 3-1, Italy 1-0 and drew with England. Those three each have won a World Cup. First time that three former winners were in a group, and Costa Rica finished at the top of it when the rest of the world expected them to finish last.

What the hell.

Tonight, they needed 120 minutes and a shootout, but they eliminated a crude and offensive Greece team, and are in the final eight.

The thing about Costa Rica’s team?

It has one of everything.

Which is good. But eventually is bad.

A team with one of everything has a solid-to-good-to-great player at every position. It’s a bit of an accident of demographics and history. But they have a very good goalkeeper (Keylor Navas), a bunch of solid guys on the back line and in midfield, and two fine forwards (Joel Campbell, the front-runner, and Bryan Ruiz, a taller, rangier guy who can create his own chances.)

I have always liked the concept of sports teams with one of everything. You seem them most often at the high school level, though some of the better “mid major” college basketball teams can be one-of-everything teams.

Teams like that often work very well together, because they all have their roles to play, and accept that — in part because it is obvious to everyone who should be playing where.

Of course, if they lose one guy, or two, they are in trouble.

So it is with Costa Rica.

Campbell seems tired. They lost one of their starting defenders Oscar Duarte, to two yellows, and their one useful backup defender, Roy Miller is hurt.

Well, and they next play the Netherlands. Maybe the most impressive team in Brazil, so far.

The Ticos won’t be afraid — they already have taken down teams with reputations at least as good — but they have to be showing some wear and tear. A county with 4.8 million people is doing well to have 11 good players. They don’t have many (any?) more, and I fear that will hurt them, on Saturday.

The stat out there is this: No Concacaf team has played in the World Cup semifinals since the U.S. did in 1930 — which wasn’t really a World Cup.

In terms of a real tournament, semifinals here … would be a hell of an accomplishment. Costa Rica would go crazy.

But the final eight, considering their group? These guys are already winners. If ever I run into one of them, in some quiet, leafy part of San Jose, I will offer to buy them a cervesa.