FRANCE, SPAIN, ARGENTINA, ENGLAND: THE LAST FOUR STANDING

Four teams are left at the 2026 World Cup, and all four have won it before. France, Spain, Argentina and England. Not one of them has lost a match in this tournament. For the first time since 1990 every semifinalist is a former champion, and for the first time since FIFA started ranking teams in 1992 the four highest ranked sides in the world have all reached the last four. There is no dark horse here, no story of a nobody. This is the tournament collapsing down to its heavyweights. Two matches, four days, one trophy.

It splits into two semifinals with almost nothing in common except the stakes. Tuesday in Arlington, Texas, France play Spain, the best attack in the tournament against the best defense. Wednesday in Atlanta, Argentina play England, a title defense running on Lionel Messi's last month in the sport against a country trying to reach its first final in 60 years. The winners meet Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. All three host nations are already out, so the final will be staged in America with no American team anywhere near it.

Tuesday in Arlington: France vs Spain

France arrive as the most dangerous team left. Didier Deschamps' side have won all six of their matches and scored 16 goals while conceding one, a run built on Kylian Mbappé, who has eight goals in this tournament and sits on 20 for his World Cup career, one behind Messi's all-time record. He scored twice past Sweden in the round of 32, converted the penalty that beat Paraguay, and opened the quarterfinal against Morocco before Ousmane Dembélé finished it, a 2-0 win that was a rematch of the 2022 semifinal. Deschamps announced in early 2025 that he will step down after this World Cup, ending 14 years in charge, so this is a farewell and a chase at the same time. No men's team has ever reached three straight World Cup finals, and France, champions in 2018 and runners-up in 2022, are one win from it.

Spain are the opposite kind of team. Luis de la Fuente's side have conceded exactly one goal across six matches, the best defense in the field, and they win late and win tight. They topped their group without conceding, beat Austria 3-0, then ground out a 1-0 win over Portugal and a 2-1 win over Belgium in which the substitute Mikel Merino scored the decisive goal in the 91st minute and then again in the 88th, a knockout hero in back to back rounds. The Portugal win doubled as the final match of Cristiano Ronaldo's World Cup career. Rodri, the Ballon d'Or holder, is back anchoring the midfield, and at the front of it all is Lamine Yamal, 18 years old, named the best player on the field in the quarterfinal and already spoken of as the best footballer alive.

The match inside the match is Mbappé against Yamal, 27 against 18, the man who has owned the last decade against the one being handed the next. Spain lead the all-time series between the countries, but the two have met only once at a World Cup, a 3-1 France win in 2006. Strongest attack against best defense is the cleanest question this tournament can ask, and it gets answered first.

Wednesday in Atlanta: Argentina vs England

Argentina are the reigning champions and they have looked nothing like it. Lionel Scaloni's team have survived three knockout rounds that all went to the wire. They beat debutants Cape Verde 3-2 in extra time only because of a 111th minute own goal. They came from two goals down to beat Egypt 3-2 on a stoppage-time header from Enzo Fernández, a night Messi also missed a penalty. Then they beat Switzerland 3-1 in extra time, Julián Álvarez burying the winner from distance and Lautaro Martínez adding a third at the death. It is a title defense running on nerve and on Messi, who at 39 is playing a record sixth World Cup, the first man to reach that number, and who holds the all-time World Cup goal record at 21 after already passing Miroslav Klose. Argentina keep saying it is his last World Cup. So far they keep finding a way to give him one more game.

England stand across from him, and they have their own escape artist. Thomas Tuchel's side are not pretty, a compact team that defends deep and strikes fast, but Jude Bellingham has carried them here almost by himself. He scored twice in two minutes to beat Mexico at the Azteca, then scored both goals, including the extra-time winner, to beat Norway in the quarterfinal, three straight knockout rounds with his name on the result. Harry Kane, the captain, has six goals and a habit of arriving late, including a brace in the final 15 minutes to turn the round of 32 against DR Congo. England have not reached a World Cup final since they won the whole thing in 1966. That is 60 years, the longest wait any of these four carry, and it ends or it extends in Atlanta.

The history between these two does not need selling. This is their first World Cup meeting since 2002, and it summons 1986, the quarterfinal in Mexico where Diego Maradona beat England with the Hand of God and then the Goal of the Century inside four minutes. Now it is Messi against Bellingham, the ending against the beginning, and Argentina have packed their midfield into a diamond to shield the 39 year old and let him decide it.

The bigger picture

Step back from the two games and the throughlines are enormous.

The first is Messi. He and Mbappé sit at the very top of the tournament's scoring chart, he has passed 200 caps for Argentina, and everything about this run has the shape of a goodbye. If Argentina win Wednesday he plays Sunday. If they lose, the Atlanta whistle is the last of his World Cup life.

The second is the torch. Mbappé is 27, Bellingham is 22, Yamal is 18, and all three are dragging nations into the final four at once. Whoever wins this tournament, the decade that follows it is being auditioned right now, on the same fields, in the same week.

The third is England and their 60 years. Their only title came in 1966. Their best finishes since are fourth place in 1990 and again in 2018. A country that invented the game and has never stopped talking about that one afternoon is 90 minutes, maybe more, from finally adding a second.

The fourth is what is missing. All three co-hosts, the United States, Mexico and Canada, went out in the round of 16, the first time in World Cup history that every host exited in the same round. The tournament is being staged across North America, the final will be played at MetLife with a Super Bowl-style halftime show attached, and there is not a single North American team left to play in it.

Four champions, none beaten, the four best teams in the world by the ranking and by the eye. France and Spain settle the first question Tuesday. Argentina and England settle the second Wednesday. On Sunday, one of them becomes the thing all four already are, a World Cup winner, and for at least one man on the field it is the last chance to feel it.