Globalisation at Europe's expense?

With the first round of fixtures and about one third of the games done and dusted, it is perhaps time to have a look at what transpired over the last 15 days and what it means in the greater context of the sport.

This has been quite a magnificent World Cup so far, with high-quality and competitive games, excellent goals and a number of upsets taking place, and all of that has been pretty well publicised. What has been far less talked about is a trend that emerged at the end of the first round. With the last few editions also taken into consideration, the trend seems to be an increase in the dominance of European and South American teams against sides with diminishing success rates from around the world.

Out of the 16 teams that qualified for the second round, 10 are from UEFA who have 14 slots for teams in the World Cup, including hosts Russia, while four of the six other teams come from the CONMEBOL region, who have five slots.

This is not a surprising statistic given that this is largely a trend that has surfaced over the past few editions, meaning that teams from the other four confederations make up only two of the last 16 spots.

The reason is quite simple: the powerhouses of football have remained confined within Europe and South America, or perhaps gotten a broader base but within those boundaries. The other parts of the world have occasionally sprung one or two surprises, but those surprises have been few and far between and too inconsistent as well. And all this happened against the tide of allowing disproportionate qualifying spots to the AFC, CAF and CONCACAF.

The increase of qualifying spots to those confederations was driven partly by the one-off successes of some African nations in the 1990s and partly from FIFA's globalisation policy as well as the political objectives of its chiefs. A bit of retrospection here would enforce the argument.

Till 1994, the World Cup was played between 24 countries, with UEFA getting 13 qualifying spots for its 34 member associations and CONMEBOL getting three spots plus another through playoffs for its nine member associations. In France 1998, as the number of participating teams was increased by eight, UEFA and CONMEBOL only received one more extra spot each while the six other spots went to the AFC, CAF and CONCACAF.

Over the next five editions, from six to ten European teams have made it to the last 16 each time, with CONMEBOL grabbing at least four places on those occasions. Meanwhile, the other spots have swapped hands from country to country, barring CONCACAF's standard-bearers Mexico.

And of course the fight for the title-decider has remained within the footballing elite of Europe and South America, namely Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, France, Brazil and Argentina.

So while globalisation of the game and the disproportionate increase in qualifying spots have helped pour riches into the footballing backwaters of Asia, Africa and North America, it has not necessarily made the game's showpiece event, the FIFA World Cup, any more competitive.

And things are set to get even more imbalanced as far as competition is concerned over the course of time. As the World Cup braces for an expansion to 48 teams -- an increase of 16 teams -- in eight years' time, there will only be an increase of two spots each for Europe and CONMEBOL. CONMEBOL's case is acceptable as it only has 10 members, but for Europe, with already 54 member associations and ever-increasing competition among them, 16 qualifying spots is far too little.

As it is, Europe's qualification process is quite difficult. You top the group and you are in; you finish with anything less, the best you can hope for is a shot in the playoffs. The absence of teams like Italy, Netherlands and Turkey are some cases in point.

So if the World Cup ends up not having Italy or Netherlands again, or perhaps Germany for that matter, in 2026, there will not be a lot to be surprised about.