Most important player for every World Cup quarterfinal team - ESPN

Since the World Cup expanded to 32 teams in 1998, there have been 28 quarterfinal matches. Of those 28 games, 14 were decided by one goal and just five saw someone win by two goals or more.

The remaining nine matches? They ended in penalty kicks.

What that all means is that 82% of modern World Cup quarterfinals have been decided by a single goal or less, and just about a third of them have been tied after 120 minutes. As we whittle the 2026 World Cup field down to a final four, it's likely that at least one quarterfinal will go all the way to penalties and at least three of the games finish with nothing more than a one-goal win.

Given how low scoring soccer is and how unlikely it is that any given shot becomes a goal, a one-goal margin tells us who kicked or headed more shots into the goal — and not much else. Systematic dominance produces more wins over the long haul, but we've reached the part of the tournament where individual brilliance and high-leverage execution overwhelms everything else.

As we approach the quarterfinal round — when individual players may very well be the deciding factor — now is the time to look at the superstars and supporting players who are likely to have an outsize impact on what happens.

These are the eight most important players for the quarterfinals of the 2026 World Cup.

France are very close to being a broken team. I don't mean that in the way that it would normally describe Les Blues: that their players hate each other, their manager is using the Zodiac cycle to select his lineups and they're one bad result away from a full-scale mutiny.

No, I mean that the pieces of the team don't really work together.

There are four defenders who mostly just defend, there are four attackers who mostly