“The top four teams in the Fifa rankings are also the four semi-finalists at the World Cup,” writes Henry Conroy. “Has this happened before?”The men’s rankings have updated after every match of the World Cup, and Fifa surely missed a trick by not asking the great Martin Tyler to shout “And they’re live!” It means the order has changed during the tournament but the makeup of the top four was the same going into the semi-finals as it was at the start of the competition.The big four were aided by Fifa’s new seeding system, though they still had to take care of business: Spain beat the teams ranked fifth and ninth (Portugal and Belgium), while France saw off No 7 (Morocco). In rankings terms, England’s best knockout win was against Mexico (14th); Argentina’s toughest test was against Switzerland (19th).The Fifa men’s rankings, which were introduced in 1993, only cover the last nine World Cups. In the previous eight, the semi-finals never included more than two teams who were ranked in the top four at the start of the competition.Before we cover our hands in stats, we should point out that the early rankings were fairly primitive: how else to explain the fact that France were 18th in the world and the Netherlands 25th going into the 1998 semi-finals?This year’s semi-finalists had a combined Fifa ranking of 10, which is the lowest possible unless you have, say, two teams in joint third. In the men’s game, the previous best was a combined ranking of 25, which came in 2014: