The 48-team 2026 FIFA World Cup gamble just gave us the greatest semifinals ever

The fear of the expanded 48-team 2026 FIFA World Cup was always that it would dilute the magic. Too many games, too much travel across a massive North American footprint, a pure financial play dressed up as sporting evolution. But here we are in mid-July, and this sprawling, continent-wide circus has just delivered something that has never happened in the history of the tournament. For the first time ever, the top four ranked teams in the world have all made the semifinals.

Just look at the slate we have been gifted. France versus Spain. Argentina versus England. These are not merely football matches; they are heavyweight prize fights with decades of geopolitical and sporting history layered onto every tackle. When the tournament expanded, traditionalists braced for endless mismatches and exhausted squads. Instead, the gruelling gauntlet of extra games has acted as the ultimate filter, burning away the pretenders and leaving only the absolute titans standing.

It is genuinely hard to overstate the sheer scale of what this past month has been. The 2026 World Cup was explicitly designed as a financial juggernaut for the host nations—an unprecedented celebration of global football stretched across three countries. It has absolutely delivered on that front, turning entire major cities into month-long festivals that have shattered revenue expectations. But the beautiful surprise is that the on-pitch product has completely matched the off-pitch magnitude.

That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been wonderfully chaotic along the way. You don’t get through a tournament this immense without some beautiful, unscripted madness—like Uruguay suddenly tapping legendary striker Diego Forlan as interim manager right in the thick of it all. But that is exactly what you want from a World Cup: high-wire soap opera perfectly balanced by elite, ruthless execution when it matters most.

We are now days away from crowning a champion from the most elite final four in FIFA history. The expanded format was a massive, controversial gamble, a logistical behemoth designed to maximise revenue and global reach. But as we gear up for Argentina and England to walk out onto the pitch, the verdict is already in. The biggest World Cup ever has somehow, against all odds, given us the best climax we could have possibly asked for.