Spain have not lost a football match since March 2024. Their reward for the latest win, a 2-1 quarter-final defeat of Belgium, is a place in the World Cup semi-finals and a figure that now reads 36: matches unbeaten, one short of the oldest record in international football.
This was no procession. Fabian Ruiz's opener on 29 minutes was cancelled out by Charles De Ketelaere, and with the tie level late on, Spain's run looked, briefly, like it might finally come unstuck. Then Mikel Merino arrived three minutes from time to settle it. La Roja moved into the last four for the first time since they lifted the trophy in South Africa in 2010.
The streak is the story. Spain have not been beaten since a 1-0 friendly loss to Colombia at London's Olympic Stadium on 22 March 2024. What has followed reads like a highlight reel: a European Championship, a Nations League title, and now a run to the semi-finals with the record books creaking open.
Two years and four months. That is how long it has been since a Spain side walked off a pitch beaten, and in that time the squad has turned over, the tournament has changed continents, and the expectations have only grown. Runs of this length are rarely built on luck. This one has been built on control.
Level with Argentina, one short of Italy
Thirty-six games unbeaten draws Spain level with the mark Lionel Scaloni's Argentina set between 2019 and 2022, a sequence that took in a Copa America and a World Cup. It also edges Spain past their own previous best, the 35-match run built between 2007 and 2009 under Luis Aragones and then Vicente del Bosque, the golden generation that won a Euros and a World Cup of their own.
That leaves one target. The outright men's record is 37, held by Roberto Mancini's Italy between 2018 and 2021. Spain would equal it with a single unbeaten result and break it with two. The maths is simple. Getting there, with the sides still left in this tournament, is anything but.
The Italy record is a specific, stubborn thing: 37 matches without defeat across three years. Spain do not need to eclipse it to make history here. They need only to keep doing what they have done for 16 months, which is avoid defeat.
The comparisons flatter Spain and burden them in equal measure. Scaloni's Argentina were world champions inside their run; del Bosque's Spain were the reference point for a decade. To stand level with the one and within touching distance of the other, and to do it at a World Cup rather than in the calm of friendlies, is its own statement.
A defence nobody has breached
Numbers underpin the run. Spain have not conceded a single goal across their five matches at this World Cup, the meanest defensive record in the tournament. Five games, five clean sheets. In a summer of open, attacking football, they have simply refused to be scored against, and it is that miserliness, as much as the possession and the passing, that has carried them this far. It is a record you would sooner associate with a grinding, cautious side than with a team raised on the ball, which is part of what makes it striking.
There is silverware attached, too. The 36-match run takes in the 2023 UEFA Nations League and the Euro 2024 title, the latter won with seven straight victories, a near-flawless campaign that confirmed this group as the best in Europe. Much of it has been built under Luis de la Fuente, whose reign already holds a Nations League and a European Championship, and now a first World Cup semi-final in 16 years.
France next, in Dallas
The record can wait a day. First comes France, on Tuesday 14 July in Dallas, a semi-final between two of the tournament favourites with a place in the final at stake. Whatever it means for the history books, it will be decided on the pitch, and against France there are no soft landings.
Beat France and Spain reach a first World Cup final since 2010, the record equalled and the trophy two games away. It is a heady set of stakes for a Tuesday night in Texas, and de la Fuente's players have earned the right to chase all of it.
The sum, for de la Fuente, is straightforward. Avoid defeat and Spain equal Italy; do it twice and they stand alone. The identity of their opponents in a possible final is not yet known. What is certain is that Spain arrive in Dallas unbeaten in 36, chasing a mark that has stood since 2021, and one win from the final they last reached, and won, 16 years ago.
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