Хөлбөмбөгийн ертөнцөд Европын ноёрхол үргэлжилсээр байна

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It has become one of the great World Cup traditions, up there with goalkeepers complaining about an unpredictable new ball. Every four years, there are a couple of surprise results, a major side is eliminated, and we’re told that “the old European dominance is collapsing”, that “football’s traditional powers are being challenged”.

It’s a nice story: it’s what we want to happen, it draws in casual supporters. The problem, of course, is that it’s simply not true.

Of the eight remaining sides at this World Cup, six are from Europe. In the knockout stage, though three European sides have been eliminated by non-European sides, two were on penalties, and the other was the United States beating a Bosnia and Herzegovina side who, having got through the qualification play-offs with two wins on shootouts, were fortunate to be here in the first place. Otherwise, we’ve actually seen more ‘surprises’ when the European team emerged victorious: Norway beating Brazil, and Belgium beating Senegal. This, really, is not what we expected by 2026.

It’s worth acknowledging the actual signs of change. First, the three most successful nations in men’s World Cup history — Brazil, Germany, Italy — are not involved in the quarter-finals. That is unprecedented.

Second, the expansion to 48 teams was always likely to benefit African nations most. By virtue of talent being spread across the continent, Africa has always boasted strength in depth. They have long been short-changed in terms of slots at the World Cup, and the fact that nine of their 10 qualifiers progressed to the knockout stage showed they have plenty of middle-ranking sides capable of competing.

But the reality is that a genuine shift away from the traditional powers — and more specifically, the European powers — has not happened. Go back to the 1990s, and there was excitement — and some nervousness from the classic big footballing nations — that serious change was imminent. Win something quick! The United States are going to take soccer seriously and they’ll be a real force! But despite a positive start to this summer’s tournament, the USMNT still aren’t close to challenging for the World Cup.

Back then, Nigeria and Cameroon were the two coming forces in African football, buoyed by Olympic successes and their players reaching new heights in European club football. This time around, neither even qualified for the World Cup. Maybe that again shows the strength in depth in Africa, and it’s impossible not to have enjoyed Cape Verde’s story, but between a country of 240million people (Nigeria) and a country of 500,000 (Cape Verde), there’s only one potential World Cup winner.

Asia’s lack of progress has also been disappointing. Japan have long felt like the ‘outsiders’ best placed to make a serious breakthrough: good infrastructure, a seriousness and professionalism about the game, a progressive philosophy originally inspired by Brazilian and Dutch coaches. Twenty-four years after hosting the World Cup and progressing from the group stage for the first time, they still haven’t won a knockout game. They are clearly a good side, and hugely unfortunate to be drawn against Brazil in the round of 32 — but after taking the lead, they played a meek game. It almost looked like they didn’t believe they could win.

What felt like emerging football nations, producing players for the best European clubs — stars from South Africa, Australia, South Korea — seemingly just had ‘golden generations’ and haven’t pushed on. Uruguay, Chile and Colombia are less impressive, or not here at all, in 2026.

If anyone has broken into the elite, it is not a country from across the Atlantic or on the other side of the world. It is Morocco, which shares a land border with Spain via the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. It will co-host the next World Cup with Spain and Portugal. You can find plenty of people willing to accept euros as well as dirham. In 1987, Morocco applied to join the European Communities, the predecessor of the European Union. Granted, they were eventually rejected on the ground that they were, well, not a European nation. But the mere application shows something.

More than two-thirds of Morocco’s World Cup players were born in Europe (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

In a footballing sense, 18 of Morocco’s 26 players were born in Europe. There’s nothing wrong with this — all these players are legitimately playing for the country of their parents or grandparents. In a recent interview with The Athletic, French Football Federation technical director Hubert Fournier discussed the factors in players’ decision-making processes, saying there is often a “sense of pride in representing the country of one’s father or grandfather”.

Yet it is likely the case that many would have represented France, Spain or the Netherlands had they been good enough. Their manager, Mohamed Ouahbi, also fits the pattern: he is of Moroccan descent but spent the first 45 years of his life in the political capital of Europe, Brussels.

There will be the odd player who slips through the net, or who simply feels more Moroccan. Right-back Achraf Hakimi was born in Madrid, came through at Real Madrid, has played in La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1, and is a better right-back than anything Europe can offer. Four years ago, Morocco’s success in reaching the semi-finals was celebrated, but their squad-building method didn’t feel like a workable model for other nations. But maybe it was. Here, 20 of DR Congo’s squad, 16 of Algeria’s squad, 14 of Cape Verde’s squad and 13 of Tunisia’s squad were born in Europe.

This is not a pattern solely confined to Africa. With the U.S., Canada and Mexico guaranteed entry as co-hosts, only three sides came through the Concacaf qualifiers. Of them, 25 of Curacao’s 26-man squad were born in the Netherlands, and 12 of Haiti’s squad were born in France. These sides are at the World Cup at the expense of previous qualifiers Honduras and Costa Rica; the latter reached the quarter-finals in 2014. Those sides are overwhelmingly domestic-born, and they’ve been left behind. In fact, they were further away from securing qualification than Suriname, another side whose squad is predominantly Dutch-born.

Many non-European countries are finding that surplus European players are more useful than players they have produced themselves. If that has helped narrow the gap to the European nations, great. But it’s hardly likely to actually overhaul them if they’re always going last in the playground-style ‘pick teams’ process.

The dominance of western European teams has largely continued despite an unprecedented run of tournaments held further afield. Tournaments once rotated between Europe and the Americas. Now it’s global. The last European World Cup was in 2018, in Russia, and ‘home advantage’ when you travel that far east is questionable, although the tournament did feature an all-European final four.

This is not triumphalism, and more of a lament. No Europeans go into a World Cup supporting other European nations for the sake of it. Most of us want to see something new, something different. Notably, there has been a recent backlash against the Europeanisation of world football from South America. The allegation is that European football is too physical and too systemised, and that young footballers from South America leave early and those countries, among other things, lose their footballing identity. There might be some truth in that. But the myth is more romantic than the reality; it’s not particularly clear who, of the current crop of players, European football has ruined.

Lamine Yamal of Spain and Portugal’s Nuno Mendes are products of elite European academies (Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images)

The obvious issue here is a combination of finance and youth development: academies in Europe are producing better players than anywhere else. But it’s also about the competitions. The European Championship feels like a World Cup and serves as good grounding for the tournament, while the introduction of the Nations League has also created more matches between top nations, and at some point will replace the qualification process.

Other continents’ equivalent competitions are either include some mediocre sides or are chronically disorganised in terms of hosting and timing. It would be a minor thing, but the confederations other than UEFA and CONMEBOL should give serious consideration to forming some kind of cross-continent competition among themselves, to produce more high-quality matches.

At the 1994 World Cup in the U.S., only one of the eight quarter-finalists was from outside Europe — eventual winners Brazil. If you were asked to predict the figure for the next North American-hosted World Cup in 32 years, you would be considered incredibly conservative for guessing it would be two. But that’s the reality. There’s been no major shift, no changing of the guard. Europe still dominates.