I think the World Cup will end up like the Club World Cup in the future. Europeans will see it as meaningless because all the good teams are in Europe, with the rest of the world bringing the quality down.

Nah, that won't ever happen. The World Cup will always be a hugely prestigious event. The Club World Cup was seen as meaningless from the very beginning, so that's completely different. The only way you'd get European teams to see it that way would be if like the Club World Cup you only allowed 1 European team to enter the competition, which just isn't going to happen

I think the World Cup will end up like the Club World Cup in the future. Europeans will see it as meaningless because all the good teams are in Europe, with the rest of the world bringing the quality down.

The maximum possible points that each person could earn if they get all of their remaining predictions spot on.

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.

Not to mention 90% of those games could go either way or had Brazil playing better than the other team (like today). The way you talk is like there is some technical gap that will prevent Brazil (or Argentina) from winning something. If anything, it's the opposite (excluding Germany and Netherlands in 2014). We always had the edge, but ended up defeating ourselves or simply having bad luck due to things like an own goal (today), a bizarre goalkeeper failure (Netherlands 2010), a irregular goal (Switzerland 2018), and so on. My point is... Brazil is as competitive as ever, just like teams like Germany and Argentina will continue to be, even tho they had utter fails this cup.

If they keep on having games where they supposedly beat the team in terms of play but lose, then yes, they have to look inward. Like, who cares if they play well, it's winning that matters.

Maybe it doesn't matter to you, or to people who have no conexion or knowlegde of the sport. But here, it definitely matters. Winning is the ultimate goal and will always be, but playing well is the better way to achieve it. Not only that, it what makes you competitive in the long scheme of things. Plenty of teams have come and go through the years, but 3 or 4 of them always have real chances of winning due to playing well or having strong bases.

Plus, we love seeing technical showcases (from any team). Football is also that for us, and I believe for many people as well. Don't worry, one day or another we'll win a World Cup again. We spent 24 years without winning one in the past (from 1970 to 1994) and we're still the top football nation.