Ka-pi96 said:
eh, won't make a difference. They'll still be 16 European teams so even if all the others were to completely suck that would still be 16 teams worth watching. It will still be the showpiece event of international football and every single European team that's in it will still want to do as well as they possibly can (ideally winning the whole thing). The opening group stage where 2/3 teams progress will be pretty much meaningless I'd agree with that, but the later rounds will still be highly anticipated as always. Besides, is there even anybody that genuinely thinks non-European teams won't ever be serious World Cup contenders again? Because if so they're almost certainly wrong. At a minimum Brazil will still be strong contenders in the future. |
I probably put too much weight in what Stefan Szymanski says (heck that's where my prediction about the World Cup becoming less relevant also came from), but he predicts in the future that Brazil (and the other South Americans) will stall behind the top teams of Western Europe. I think it's already happened, loot at Brazil's results against Western European teams at World Cups since 2006.
0-1 vs. France
0-0 vs. Portugal
1-2 vs. the Netherlands
1-7 vs. Germanu
0-3 vs. the Netherlands
1-1 vs. Switzerland
1-2 vs. Belgium
That makes 0 wins, 2 draws and 5 losses.
Before 2010 the only time two consecutive World Cups were won by a European team was 1934 and 1938. 2018 will mark the fourth consecutive time a European team wins the World Cup.
