A few things

- As a chilean I can tell you that we can't produce much elite players. Our current team is a "golden generation" that is made mostly of U20 2005 and 2007 generation, same team that was youngest in southafrica 2010 and one of the oldest in Copa Centenario 2016. From those we have our true world class players that are Vidal and Sánchez and then come the likes of Bravo, Medel and Aránguiz. After that we haven't been able to produce much more. 

- I think Colombia have a way bigger pool of talent than Chile actually. I think our first 11 is better but they have a better squad and more talented players overall.

- Argentina, Uruguay and Chile are not comparable IMO. Population wise, Argentina are 40 million, Chile 17 and Uruguay 3. Talent wise, what Argentina produces is massive, and Uruguay for it's size could be considered the very best. Economy wise Argentina is a mess, Chile and Uruguay are more centered. 

- In terms of CONMEBOL, I think you can divide in the best that are still Argentina and Brazil, then come the good that are Chile, Uruguay and Colombia, the mid Ecuador and Paraguay and the lower Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia. Mexico and USA also have the problem that their competition sucks, Concacaf sucks and Copa Centenario showed it, they should do what Australia did and get out if they want to get better. 

But Brazil sucks nowdays...

I'd say Colombia have produced some good talent in recent years though, Peru not so much, but Colombia have. Although it is worth noting that the economy in Colombia/Peru is a fair bit worse off than in Argentina or Uruguay.

As for the others, are they really as interested in football as the top European/South American countries? I don't think so. Australians and South Africans would rather play Rugby or Cricket. The Chinese are usually one of the top olympic medal earners so it's obvious where their top atheletes are going (although with all the investment they currently putting in to football who knows how that could change things for their national team in the long term). India is obsessed with cricket, if they liked football as much as they did cricket then they'd have a good team, but they don't. Japan & Korea prefer to play baseball rather than football. There have been some great players of Moroccan/Algerian origin (they just usually end up playing for France ). Egypt and Tunisia are significantly poorer than the top South American countries, their economies are actually at a similar level to Peru. As for Saudi I'd assume there just isn't as much interest there as elsewhere. It seems most of the Arab investment in football is coming from the significantly smaller UAE or Qatar rather than Saudi.

For a lot of African countries there just isn't the infrastructure there for a lot of players. Brazil may have been a fairly poor country when they rose to the elite but they did have a top league. No African countries really have that. It seems a lot of the money invested in African youth football is from European teams so the African players often end up eligible to play for a European country as well after moving there at a young age. Although there have been times where it looked like an African country could emerge as a great footballing nation, so maybe it will happen sooner or later.

As for Turkey... that's harder to explain. Maybe it's the fault of Germany stealing all the good Turkish footballers though

A few things

- As a chilean I can tell you that we can't produce much elite players. Our current team is a "golden generation" that is made mostly of U20 2005 and 2007 generation, same team that was youngest in southafrica 2010 and one of the oldest in Copa Centenario 2016. From those we have our true world class players that are Vidal and Sánchez and then come the likes of Bravo, Medel and Aránguiz. After that we haven't been able to produce much more. 

- I think Colombia have a way bigger pool of talent than Chile actually. I think our first 11 is better but they have a better squad and more talented players overall.

- Argentina, Uruguay and Chile are not comparable IMO. Population wise, Argentina are 40 million, Chile 17 and Uruguay 3. Talent wise, what Argentina produces is massive, and Uruguay for it's size could be considered the very best. Economy wise Argentina is a mess, Chile and Uruguay are more centered. 

- In terms of CONMEBOL, I think you can divide in the best that are still Argentina and Brazil, then come the good that are Chile, Uruguay and Colombia, the mid Ecuador and Paraguay and the lower Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia. Mexico and USA also have the problem that their competition sucks, Concacaf sucks and Copa Centenario showed it, they should do what Australia did and get out if they want to get better. 

Oh, a golden generation you say. I asked myself that back in 2010 and 2014 World cups, is this a temporary success for Chile for maybe 6 or 7 years or did they really take the next step and became an elite football nation for the rest of my lifetime?

How popular is your domestic football league?

It does. But he didn't say Brazil is great as a team nowadays... he said it still produces a lot of great players, and that's true. While there are no Ronaldos or Romarios, we still factory a good amount of good players compared to most countries. Had we have a decent confederation and a coach in the past years, we would surely still be competitive in the worldwide scenario.

I'd say Colombia have produced some good talent in recent years though, Peru not so much, but Colombia have. Although it is worth noting that the economy in Colombia/Peru is a fair bit worse off than in Argentina or Uruguay.

As for the others, are they really as interested in football as the top European/South American countries? I don't think so. Australians and South Africans would rather play Rugby or Cricket. The Chinese are usually one of the top olympic medal earners so it's obvious where their top atheletes are going (although with all the investment they currently putting in to football who knows how that could change things for their national team in the long term). India is obsessed with cricket, if they liked football as much as they did cricket then they'd have a good team, but they don't. Japan & Korea prefer to play baseball rather than football. There have been some great players of Moroccan/Algerian origin (they just usually end up playing for France ). Egypt and Tunisia are significantly poorer than the top South American countries, their economies are actually at a similar level to Peru. As for Saudi I'd assume there just isn't as much interest there as elsewhere. It seems most of the Arab investment in football is coming from the significantly smaller UAE or Qatar rather than Saudi.

For a lot of African countries there just isn't the infrastructure there for a lot of players. Brazil may have been a fairly poor country when they rose to the elite but they did have a top league. No African countries really have that. It seems a lot of the money invested in African youth football is from European teams so the African players often end up eligible to play for a European country as well after moving there at a young age. Although there have been times where it looked like an African country could emerge as a great footballing nation, so maybe it will happen sooner or later.

As for Turkey... that's harder to explain. Maybe it's the fault of Germany stealing all the good Turkish footballers though

This is what I meant. Brazil still produces a hell lot of talent and even the World cup failure team made it to semifinals and finished 4th. And not so long ago Brazil won 2 confederation cups (one against Spain in the final) and are still played like you play a big team.

People get drunk with results sometimes, current Chile is what you have with a mix of good talent, decent management (we've had a bad coach and a lot of corruption in our federation but good decisions were made that saved us. This compared to the shit most federations have in south america) and a little bit of luck. But still, we are not more than Colombia and Uruguay, and very far from Brazil and Argentina, who IMO are top in the world and results would show it if they had decent management to channel so much talent.