The model gave Ecuador a 6.8% chance of beating Germany. That number was not a rounding error or a system malfunction. Germany at ELO 2030 were one of the tournament's pre-tournament favourites. Ecuador at 1681 were a team expected to compete in their group, finish third, and go home. What happened instead was the single biggest upset of the 2026 World Cup by probability gap: Ecuador won 2-1, ended Germany's tournament before the knockout rounds began, and left the model with the task of updating a worldview about both teams in a single afternoon.

The result cost Germany approximately 88 ELO points over the course of the tournament — they now sit at 1942, a fall from their pre-tournament 2030 that reflects not just the Ecuador loss but the context around it. The group stage is supposed to sort teams by quality. Ecuador's result proved it sometimes sorts them by something harder to measure.

This match looked, at the time, like France asserting dominance. It was — but it was also, in retrospect, a window into what Norway could become. France won 4-1. The scoreline was emphatic. But Norway were competitive for over an hour, scoring from open play, pressing France higher than any team had managed in the tournament to that point. The 1-4 flatters France slightly; for sixty minutes it was a football match.

The reason this moment belongs in a road-to-the-final narrative is what it reveals: Norway were not overawed by France. They were not passive. They were outclassed in the final third by an opponent with more individual quality, but their system — the press, the counter, the channels opened by Haaland's movement — worked exactly as designed even against the world's second-best team. That system would later eliminate Ivory Coast and Brazil. The France match was where the blueprint was tested and found to be viable.

If Ecuador-Germany was the tournament's biggest probability upset, Morocco's last-thirty-two win over the Netherlands was its most extraordinary performance. Morocco didn't defend and counter. They scored four. Four goals against a Netherlands team carrying an ELO of 2018 that concedes relatively few, plays an organised defensive structure, and had arrived at the knockout rounds on the back of a decent group stage.

The 4-3 scoreline is almost misleading because it implies a defensive lapse on Morocco's part that the match didn't entirely reflect. Morocco were the better team. Their pressing won the ball in dangerous areas. Their transitions were faster and more incisive than anything the Netherlands produced going forward. The result moved Morocco's ELO from 1910 to approximately 1945 in a single match and announced them as a genuine quarter-final contender. They went on to beat Canada 3-0 and meet France. The France quarter-final result — 0-2 — was the only match in their run where the system didn't quite work. But everything up to that point had been remarkable.

This is the match the model will remember longest. Not because the probability was the lowest (Ecuador-Germany was lower at 6.8%) but because Brazil at ELO 2050 was, at the time of the match, the most credentialled opponent Norway had faced. And Norway won it with goals that required quality, not luck: Haaland's first-half header from an Ødegaard delivery, composed and clinical; Haaland's winner in the 79th minute from a counter-attack that Brazil, chasing the game, had made possible.

Brazil's exit before the quarter-finals — they sit at ELO 2050, down 30 points from their pre-tournament 2080 — is the tournament's most consequential non-result. A Brazil at their best level was one of the three or four teams the model considered capable of beating France in a final. They were eliminated in the last sixteen by a team rated 270 ELO points below them at the start of the competition. Norway gained 35 ELO points from the result. Brazil lost the same. The gap between 1831 and 2050 turned out to be smaller than it looked.

Belgium's group stage was one of the tournament's most baffling sequences: two draws against Egypt and Iran in matches they were expected to win comfortably, then a 5-1 thrashing of New Zealand that confused more than it clarified. Were Belgium saving themselves? Were they genuinely struggling? The 4-1 win over the United States in the last sixteen answered both questions at once.

De Bruyne at his best — which is what Belgium produced against the USA — is not a player the model fully captures in ELO terms because ELO measures team performance and De Bruyne's individual impact in transitional phases is a team multiplier. He scored once and created two. The USA, who had arrived at the last sixteen with genuine belief in their tournament prospects, were dispatched in a way that looked almost easy. Belgium are in the quarter-finals against Spain. They are a serious threat to anyone.

The last sixteen also produced the tournament's most dramatic match — a 4-3 Switzerland win over Colombia that required Breel Embolo's winner with nine minutes remaining to seal a result that had swung three times. Colombia equalised twice. Switzerland, each time, found an answer. The final goal — Embolo converting a low cross from the right with the kind of calm that seems impossible given the circumstances — settled a match that will be discussed for years.

Switzerland's 4-3 win was not simply a lucky result. They scored four goals against a Colombia team (ELO 1926) that was no weak opposition. They showed tactical flexibility, attacking intent, and the psychological resilience to keep scoring after each setback. Their ELO has risen 92 points since the tournament started. They meet Argentina on July 12. Nobody who watched that Colombia match would confidently rule them out.

The most recent chapter, and the one that clarified what France are capable of at the highest level. Morocco arrived in the quarter-final having beaten the Netherlands 4-3 and Canada 3-0. The model had France at only 52.9% — its lowest winning probability for France in the entire tournament. The scoreline was 2-0. The statistics were 22 shots to 5, 8 on target to 1. France didn't just win. They made one of the tournament's best stories look containable.

Kylian Mbappé's 60th-minute goal was the moment the match turned. Ousmane Dembélé's 66th added the insurance. For sixty minutes, France had absorbed Morocco's pressure, conceded nothing, and then struck twice in six minutes when the opportunity presented. That is not a lucky team. That is a team with the tactical intelligence to manage a match, the individual quality to break it open, and the defensive solidity to ensure it stays broken. France are in the semi-finals. On the evidence of the last four matches, they are the tournament's most complete team.