Chile reaches Copa America final, Colombia to face U.S. for third place

We will get a rematch of the 2015 Copa America final at the 2016 Copa America Centenario.

In a game that lasted four hours and change, Chile won 2-0 over Colombia in the second semifinal on Wednesday, after Argentina had emasculated the United States 4-0 the night prior. That is, until the Weather Gods intervened in Chicago and halted the game for 2½ hours between halves with a savage thunderstorm.

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After a frantic start, Chile got to work on the continuation of the beating they had just handed to Mexico in the quarterfinals, when they ran up a 7-0 score. In a few moments of defensive malpractice, Colombia went two behind and put itself in an impossible position against the defending South American champions.

In the seventh minute, Juan Cuadrado tracked back and headed a Jose Fuenzalida cross to his own goalkeeper, David Ospina. But Charles Aranguiz intercepted it and slid it under the goalie.

By the 11th minute, the score had doubled. Alexis Sanchez won the ball high up the field off a goal kick and smashed a shot off the near post. Fuenzalida pounced and converted simply in front of an open net.

That second goal, funnily enough, tilted the run of play in Colombia's favor as Chile retreated into its own half. Rather than chase some more goals and seeing if La Roja could net a 10th for their last two games, they set about slowing the contest down by getting more physical.

But just as soon as the players had made it inside, the storm unleashed its fury.

One fan took advantage of the opportunity to take a leisurely jog around the field, and very nearly got away with it.

When the rain finally let up after two hours, the grounds crew cleared the field with squeegees.

The game was finally resumed around 10:30 p.m. local time, after kicking off just after 7 o'clock, on a field that was still plenty soggy. And almost immediately, Colombia's Daniel Torres was brought down by Gonzalo Jara in Chile's box but denied a clear penalty.

The Cafeteros's comeback wasn't to be. Because just before the hour, Carlos Sanchez was given a very soft second yellow card.

Even a man down, James Rodriguez and his peers were the better team. But their dominance didn't manifest itself in a great many chances. Other than a stinging shot from James, which zoomed right into the hands of Bravo, they produced little of note in the final third.

Late on, meanwhile, Alexis was wrongly denied a penalty as well when Cristian Zapata got none of the ball and all of him on a last-ditch tackle from a breakaway.

And so, like last year, we'll have an Argentina-Chile Copa final. Chile hadn't been terribly keen on this one-off centennial celebration tournament, coming, as it did, just a year after they'd finally won the thing for the first time in 99 years of futile attempts. The Chileans will feel better about it now. Like Argentina, which was much more keen to begin with after losing two straight major finals in extra time – the 2014 World Cup as well – and getting another chance to end a 23-year trophy drought.

It was a weird and wet night, but in the end, some more efficacy in front of goal by the world's fifth-ranked team was too much for the planet's third-ranked team to overcome.

Here's another fan running around on the field.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.