Honestly I really don't get too deep into why how a team lost or could have done better. I'm the most familiar tactics or individual players I'm more of a historian.

Ah, I see. Btw, who are you rooting for now? My top picks are France, Belgium and Croatia, respectively.

Since you brought up historic data, I'd say France deserves to win again due to how consistently good they've been since the 80s, except the 2002 and 2010 implosions.

LOL I messed up my previous post. I meant to say I don't know too much about tactics or the individual players (can't name the starting lineup of any team). I usually cheer for the USA (but they missed it this time). Then Iran and Japan but both are out now. I don't usually root for UEFA teams other than Turkey, but I want the winner of Croatia and Russia to win in this tournament out of the teams remaining. Initially leaned towards Croatia, but now I want Russia.

Who?

Anyway, I think you're being far too pessimistic. Brazil haven't had the best results against western European teams recently, but it's only a matter of time before they start winning again. Or hey maybe they'll come up against Andorra or something and then they'll surely win Look at the players Brazil have available to them still and the potential future players they have. Nearly every top European club has a a Brazilian player, there's still a huge amount of talent from Brazil for pretty much ever position. And in the future you've got players like Vinícius Júnior coming along too, I know nothing about the lad but if Real Madrid were willing to pay €45 million for a 17 year old there must be something special about him.

Besides, what about Argentina? They haven't really got as good a squad as Brazil and didn't in 2014 either yet they knockout out 3 of those western European teams you listed (Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands). If they can do that then Brazil are certainly capable of it too, and possibly Argentina again as well.

Then what about China too? They're pretty crappy now, and probably will be for awhile yet. But they're aiming to be the #1 team in the world by 2050. I very much doubt they'll actually manage that. But them becoming one of the world's stronger teams eventually seems almost inevitable to me.

I've no idea what a sports economist even is

I really don't buy that "middle performance trap" theory. I think it's just oversimplifying football. The US and Japan aren't as good as European or south American teams largely because they don't like football as much. They prefer other sports ahead of football, and while that doesn't mean they can't be a top football country as well, the sheer number of more popular sports in the US or the margin of the difference in Japan it certainly means there are less potentially top quality athletes going into football than there could be if it were more popular. That's also why China may far exceed either of them when they improve. Not only does China have a much larger population than either to better deal with competition from other sports, but there also isn't as much competition as in the US or Japan in the first place. This is a big if still, but if they do get really passionate about football then they will surely become a major power in the game.

I saw an interesting article that was something to do with that about Uruguay recently. They may not ever be one of the absolute favourites for the World Cup, but they are regularly seen as a dark horse contender, that's despite them being a small country with a tiny population. They're just so passionate about football, it's much more than just a game to them, and that's why they continue to produce top quality players despite being so small. It's for that reason that I think there will always be south American countries in with a shout of winning the World Cup. They may not win it as often as European teams, with how many more European teams there are that's quite reasonable, but they'll always be some contenders from there, and relatively speaking they are still way more successful in the World Cup than European teams (9 WCs for only 10 CONMEBOL nations, compared to 12 WCs for UEFA's 55 nations).