Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez is challenging his players to make the nation's dream come true as they attempt to book their place in the World Cup semi-finals.

The South Americans face the last surviving African side, Ghana, in the quarter-finals at Johannesburg's Soccer City on Friday with their fans hoping against all hope for a repeat of the heroics that saw them lift the trophy in both 1930 and 1950.

Tabarez said: "Before we began this World Cup, we saw this great harmony among the players and I said to them, 'The people back home have aspirations, they have dreams and we have to deliver them'."