The World Cup has shrunk from 48 teams to 8, and if you look at a map of who's still standing, the geography tells a story all its own. There's a Reddit post on r/MapPorn making the rounds right now that highlights the countries still in the tournament, and the visual is striking — most of the world has been crossed out.

Western Europe absolutely dominates the quarterfinal bracket. France, England, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland — five of the eight remaining teams are packed into a corner of the continent you could drive across in a day. It's the kind of clustering that makes you wonder whether there's something in the water between the Alps and the English Channel. The 2022 tournament gave us Morocco and Croatia breaking through the European wall. This year, the old guard has reasserted itself with a vengeance.

And yet, the outliers make this bracket worth watching. Morocco is back in the quarterfinals, becoming the first African nation to reach consecutive World Cup quarterfinals. They play France on Thursday in Foxborough — a rematch of the 2022 semifinal that ended their historic run. Norway, meanwhile, is in entirely uncharted territory. They'd never made it past the round of 16 before this year, and now they've knocked out Brazil and are riding Erling Haaland's golden boot campaign into a quarterfinal against England. The Viking Row celebration has become the signature image of this tournament, and for good reason — Cinderella stories this deep in a World Cup are vanishingly rare.

Argentina rounds out the map as South America's sole survivor, facing a Switzerland side that outlasted Colombia on penalties. Spain and Belgium meet in the other quarterfinal, a matchup between two of the most talented squads in the world that have both spent the last decade trying to turn golden generations into a trophy.

The quarterfinals kick off Thursday with France-Morocco. By Sunday night we'll be down to four, and that map will look even smaller. — Fox Sports has a great breakdown of the key storylines for every remaining team.