The top four teams in Fifa’s world rankings have made the semi-finals of the World Cup for the first time.<\/p>\n
And the progress of Spain (1), Argentina (2), France (3) and England (4) was aided by a Fifa change for the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
They were put in separate quadrants of the draw so they could not meet before the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
For that to happen they had to each win their groups – which they did.<\/p>\n
The separation in the draw meant that Spain could not meet Argentina before the final. <\/p>\n
Additionally, England and France were put in opposite sides of the knockouts and on a path to meet either Spain or Argentina in the semi-finals if they all progressed.<\/p>\n
Fifa described the move as ensuring “competitive balance” by establishing “two separate pathways to the semi-finals”.<\/p>\n
And now the semi-finals are France v Spain on Tuesday, and England v Argentina on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
A similar approach happens at Wimbledon, and in the new Champions League format, at which seeds are kept apart in pairs.<\/p>\n
Fifa rankings were introduced in 1994, but not used for that year’s tournament. <\/p>\n
Belgium (2022), Germany (2018), Spain (2014), Italy (2010) and France (2002) were ranked in the top four and did not get out of the group.<\/p>\n
At the remaining World Cups since 1998 – the top ranked teams did not all get through to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The top four teams in Fifa’s world rankings have made the semi-finals of the World Cup for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-796591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}