Four of the most storied nations in world football. Two semi-finals. And the very real possibility that a spot kick — one player, one goalkeeper, twelve yards — decides who gets to play for the biggest prize in the sport. The Athletic has run the numbers and the history, and the conclusion is uncomfortable for some of these fanbases more than others.
England, France, Spain and Argentina are the last four standing at the 2026 World Cup. On paper, that is a semi-final draw that writes itself — generational talent, historic rivalries, and enough tactical intrigue to fill a week of punditry. But The Athletic's analytical piece, published on 13 July, zeroes in on something more primal: what happens if the match is still level after 120 minutes and it all comes down to penalties.
It is not a hypothetical without teeth. World Cup semi-finals are notoriously tight. The margins between these four nations, in particular, are razor-thin — and the shootout has a habit of showing up exactly when no one wants it.
Argentina arrive with the most recent evidence on their side. Their run to the 2022 World Cup title in Qatar included a shootout win over France in the final itself — Gonzalo Montiel converting the decisive kick while Kylian Mbappé watched from the other end. That institutional memory matters. A squad that has been through that, and won, carries something into the next one.
Spain, meanwhile, have rebuilt their identity entirely under Luis Enrique and beyond. The current generation — Lamine Yamal, Pedri, Rodri pulling the strings — are built to control matches and make shootouts unnecessary. But Spain's penalty history is patchy enough that their fans will not be entirely relaxed if it comes to that.
France have Mbappé. That sentence does a lot of work — until it doesn't. His miss in the 2022 final shootout is the asterisk that follows him everywhere, and while he has the quality to be the best penalty taker on the planet on any given night, the record is complicated.
And then there is England.
No national team has a more loaded psychological file on penalties than England. The exits, the misses, the years of near-misses — it is practically a genre of its own. What has shifted, at least partially, is the preparation. The Football Association has invested heavily in shootout practice and sports psychology since 2018, and the 2021 Euros final at Wembley — painful as it was — showed a squad willing to put younger players forward under pressure.
The question is whether the work done in training actually transfers when 80,000 people are watching and a World Cup final place is the prize. England fans have heard that the culture has changed. They are still waiting for the definitive proof.
The Athletic's piece is forward-looking analysis rather than a match report — nothing has been decided by penalties yet. But the value of thinking about it now is exactly this: these four teams know each other's tendencies, and the coaches in those dugouts — whether it is Gareth Southgate's successor, Didier Deschamps, Luis Enrique, or Lionel Scaloni — will have war-gamed the shootout scenario already.
Scaloni, for one, has been here before and has a winner's medal to show for it. That is not nothing.
The semi-finals will be decided by football first. But if the football cannot separate them, it comes down to one player walking forward, placing the ball, and deciding everything. Four nations. Two spots. The most nerve-shredding format in sport.
Somebody is going to miss.
Four of the most storied nations in world football. Two semi-finals. And the very real possibility that a spot kick — one player, one goalkeeper, twelve yards
Fontes
The Athletic — Football
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