The 2026 World Cup witnessed the top four national teams in the FIFA ranking reaching the semi-final round for the first time in the tournament's history.
The teams of France, Spain, England and Argentina qualified for the semi-finals of the 2026 World Cup.
The French national team will face its Spanish counterpart in the first semi-final, while the English national team will play its Argentine counterpart in the second semi-final.
The top four create a historic precedent in the World Cup
A modification made by FIFA to the 2026 World Cup draw system helped France (ranked first), Argentina (ranked second), Spain (ranked third) and England (ranked fourth) reach this round.
The four teams were placed in four separate paths within the tournament bracket, preventing them from facing each other before the semi-final round.
To achieve this, each team had to top its group, which the four teams succeeded in doing.
Thanks to this distribution, Spain could not face Argentina before the final match.
England and France were also placed on different sides of the knockout stages, so that their path to facing Spain or Argentina in the semi-finals would be if the four teams continued their journey.
FIFA described this modification as aiming to ensure "competitive balance" by creating "two separate paths to the semi-final round".
Indeed, the semi-final matches resulted in France facing Spain on Tuesday, and England and Argentina on Wednesday.
A similar approach is used in the Wimbledon tournament, as well as in the new UEFA Champions League system, where top teams or players are separated at certain stages of the tournament.
FIFA had introduced the world ranking for national teams in 1994, but it was not used in the draw for the World Cup held in the same year.
In previous editions of the World Cup, teams that were among the top four in the ranking were eliminated from the group stage, such as France (2002), Italy (2010), Spain (2014), Germany (2018) and Belgium (2022).
As for the rest of the World Cup editions since 1998, the top four teams in the FIFA ranking had never all succeeded in reaching the semi-final round.
