Most experts agreed at the start of the tournament, this was the World Cup that would see a non-European team win.
It’s been a while, of course. The last time Uefa didn’t produce the World Champion was the last time that the tournament was held in Asia. Brazil stood in the confetti in 2002. As much as my creaky left knee wants to think that wasn’t that long ago, it really was.
Twenty years have passed. The entire Millennial generation has now come of age and started to age out of the ever-expanding youth market since we last saw South America on top.
There’s good reason for that. As the Premier League started to take over the world’s attention and the transfer of young players into that league from South America became the norm, the power started to shift.
No longer could the South American powers draw on unknown starlets from their domestic leagues to surprise the European powers. Those leagues have dried up and are not close to truly competing with Europe any longer. The only measure we have — the Club World Cup — clearly shows this.
Outside of Brazil’s Corinthians win in 2012, there hasn’t been a South American champion since 2006. Even more troubling, three times since 2015 a South American side hasn’t even made the final.
Now, the World Club Cup has its faults, sure, but not so many that you can’t just ignore those facts. Clearly, South America stopped competing on an equal level as Europe around the time that big money and attention started to focus almost entirely on Europe (or England, if you want to narrow it down even further.)
Bringing this back to Qatar, it becomes difficult to see how that will change now. This has not been a great tournament for CONMEBOL thus far. Argentina huffed and puffed its way past Mexico but lost to Saudi Arabia. Ecuador is out. Uruguay has yet to score. Plus, they lost a team before the tournament even started when Peru lost the intercontinental playoff. Not great.
Of course, there is always Brazil. The team with the greatest history in the World Cup and the team that came into this tournament as the punter’s choice. They are 2-0-0 and through and they did beat a European opponent, albeit one that would be considered a middling power in Switzerland.
Have they looked good though? It says here that they’ve looked…ok. Just ok. Both France and Spain have looked much better and, the USA game aside, even England seems more likely to win at this point than do Brazil.
We shouldn’t be surprised. As stated, the World Cup has become the Euros with a bunch of others there to make up the numbers. That’s particularly the case once the knock-out rounds start.
As stated, since the tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1998, Europe has won five of six titles. Although South American teams have a slightly better record in the Group Stage (2.04 points per game for South America compared to 1.59 for Europe. The other confederations are basically non-factors — 3rd is CONCACAF at 1.06, Africa is 0.75 and Asia is 0.72. Oceania doesn’t have a big enough sample size, but it’s 1.25, for the completists out there) much of that can be chalked up to the fact that Europe brings more than double the teams to the tournament than South America.
So, don’t believe the narrative that the usual suspects aren’t the favourite here. Put money on one of the big European sides to win, again.
As for whether that’s a good thing, that’s really a matter of opinion. Personally, I’d rather see the field more open, but I have a hard time believing it ever will be again.
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