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Europe: The Powerhouse of World Football?

Another World Cup over. Another night of European success on football’s biggest stage, this time with a Spanish flavour. By adding the most-coveted prize in international football to the European Championships they won in Vienna two years ago, Spain unquestionably now carry the mantle of the world’s best team.

But, in the context of European football, what other conclusions can we draw from their triumph in Johannesburg?

In succeeding Italy as world champions, Spain became the fifth European team lift the Jules Rimet trophy. The three other countries to have won the world cup are all South American – Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, the latter having won football’s premier competition on a record 5 occasions. Ostensibly, these facts appear to show no vast gulf between Europe and the rest of the world (or South America at least) in terms of success. Indeed, a simple glance through the list of previous World Cup winners shows that of the 19 tournaments to have taken place, 10 have been won by European teams while the remaining 9 have gone to South America. However, if we delve a little deeper into the statistics we can see that European teams dominate world football and this trend looks set to continue.

For the second successive tournament, the World Cup final was an all-European affair. Indeed, three of the four semi-finalists in South Africa were European (Spain, Netherlands and Germany) while in 2006, all four of the teams contesting the semi-finals were European (France, Italy, Germany, Portugal). What needs to be noted here is not only that seven of the last eight semi-finalists have been European but also that six different European nations have reached the semi-final stage over the last two world cups. While reaching a competition’s penultimate stage may not necessarily be a mark of achievement in itself, this fact demonstrates that European teams, at least in the last two world cups, have taken a stranglehold on the business end of the competition.

So Europe has dominated the last two competitions, but what about the historical trend?

When Spain beat Germany to book their place in the World Cup final, they became the twelfth country to reach football’s showpiece game. Of these twelve, nine are European. Incredibly, since its inception in 1930, only 3 non-European countries have ever reached the World Cup final. The closest Asia has ever been to providing a World Cup finalist was when 2002’s joint hosts South Korea fell at the semi-final stage while no African team has ever been further than the quarter-finals, a fact Ghana were one kick of the ball away from changing in this year’s competition.

The European club game is an important component of its international success. Unquestionably, the strongest domestic leagues in the world are in Europe. Spain’s La Liga and the English Premier League attract football’s biggest stars from both inside and outside Europe. These cash-rich leagues provide the clubs that are annually at the forefront of the race for glory in the European Champions League. Other continents do not have domestic or continental competitions that can compete with Europe’s. While some argue that this can in fact hinder the development of a nation’s international team, as foreign stars are bought for huge sums rather than promising young local players being given a chance to develop, there is no doubt that Europe’ international teams benefit from the high level of the club leagues.

Furthermore, Europe provides so many quality teams that even if England, Italy and France all endured disappointing World Cup campaigns in South Africa, there are many more countries that can carry the European torch into the latter stages of the tournament. After all, over 50 European teams take part in qualifying for the World Cup with 13 places available. Curiously, a similar number of African countries are involved in the qualifying process but with much lower success rate in the final tournament. This demonstrates that winning in football is a question of tradition, funding and structure through domestic and continental competitions. Diligent progress in these fields will hopefully ensure that in Brazil 2014, Europeans can believe with good reason that their teams will again reach the pinnacle of world football.