Who's better at football? 30% of Conmebol teams have won the World Cup (vs less than 10% in the case of UEFA) Lets not even talk about economic and population differences, because taking them into account, the difference is staggering. Add to that the fact that UEFA has many more WC berths, so many Euro teams reach later stages just because they eliminate each other. Conmebol is better by far.
The average UEFA team is worse than the average CONMEBOL team. There are tons of teams in UEFA that are tiny nations with very little footballing tradition. They are pretty bad. The CONMEBOL countries are all at least decent (Peru and Bolivia aren't that good, but they're better than tons of random UEFA nations). But, I think there are more top notch UEFA teams than there are top notch CONMEBOL teams. The reason for this is basically that there are more traditional footballing powers in UEFA than in CONMEBOL. UEFA has Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, and England that will pretty much always be pretty good. And then you can expect a few other random nations to be having a golden age at any given time and also be good (for instance, Belgium nowadays). In CONMEBOL, you've got Brazil, Argentina, and sort of Uruguay as the only major powers. Outside of that, some teams might be having good years (Chile and Columbia nowadays, for instance). So I think it depends on how you want to judge it. There are going to be far more high quality UEFA teams than CONMEBOL teams at almost any time. But the average CONMEBOL team is much better than the average UEFA team. Ultimately, for our purposes, I think this makes UEFA stronger. It naturally is harder to win the Euros than the Copa America when there are more teams good enough to win it. And a UEFA team is more likely to win the World Cup, because, again, there are more UEFA teams good enough to win than CONMEBOL teams good enough to win.
10 CONMEBOL countries: Average FIFA Ranking of 37.7 with an average of 909.7 points 53 UEFA countries: Average FIFA Ranking of 59.6 with an average of 685.2 points
Nah, the reason is far simpler than that. It's because there are far more countries in Europe so UEFA has more of everything: more good teams, more bad teams, more average teams, more teams that wear blue jerseys, etc. So having more good teams is not really meaningful in this context. I mean not if more good teams comes along with a whole lot more bad teams. Just dilutes things, doesn't make it stronger.
That depends. If you're talking about quality between two random teams in a qualifier, I'd agree. Outside of random draws in qualifiers, I'd disagree though. Having more bad teams doesn't really affect continental tournament quality. It only loosely impacts WC finals teams from UEFA (because they stubbornly won't go to a two tier qualifier to weed out minnows, which reduces the odds of a better team getting left out from the rare odd result).
Now that the Euro has expanded to 24 teams, I'm not even sure that's true anymore. In the Euros, maybe 7-9 of the teams are really good but then there is a drop-off.
That definitely weakens the argument, but regardless, the bottom half of the field will have a higher elo than the bottom half of CONMEBOL's Copa field. The difference is more stark bottom third v bottom third. SA definitely has a lot of quality 3-6 that really elevates the confed though. You guys always seemed to have that third team, but last year the depth was on full display. How much of that, relative to UEFA, was due strictly to the WC month least year vs long term shifts in strength remains to be seen. The status of the confed was definitely elevated due to the last WC. I suspect it's a bit of both, but time will tell.
I ran the numbers a while back (cannot locate them now) on the 2014 and 2010 WCs, looking at average finishing position. Conmebol was slightly better in South Africa 2010 than in Brazil 2014. Also the gap, favoring Conmebol, between the average Conmebol finishing place and the average Euro finishing place was even larger in 2010 than in 2014. In 2010, Conmebol advanced all of their 5 qualifiers to the second round and only lost 1 (Chile to Spain) of their 15 group stage games, won 4 of their 5 groups and advanced 4 teams to the quarterfinals. 2014 may have ended up even better for Conmebol if 4 or their teams did not all end up in the same quarter of the bracket. Real shame only one of Brazil, Chile, Colombia could make the semis. Equador just missing the second round was also a factor. Point is Conmebol has performed very well for 2 straight WCs and one of them was in South America. I do expect that Europe will improve as a whole in Russia. In the last 2 WCs, only 6 of 13 European teams (<50%) made it out of the first round. I expect that to rise to at least 8 in 2018, probably more.
I think your first paragraph is right. But I also think the average team in UEFA is worse. It's not just that there are more teams. A greater percent of UEFA teams are terrible. But yeah, more teams basically accounts for why there are more great teams. However, I do think it is meaningful even if it is just about there being more countries. For any given team, it is harder to win a major tournament when there are more great teams in it. There are more great UEFA teams, hence it is harder for any given team to win the Euros than the Copa America. Thus, I think winning the Euros is a bigger achievement.
The most difficult and fiercest competition in the World is not the Euro, nor the Copa América, and not even the World Cup. It is the Southamerican WC Qualifiers. Since there are 4,5 winners instead of a single champion, competitiveness is higher. Uruguay came in 5th place in them in 2010, and 4th in that World Cup. Argentina almost eliminated when Maradona was in charge. The worst team, Bolivia, can still upset any other team, 6-1 vs Argentina comes to mind. Paraguay qualified for 4 straight WCs before they came last in the 2014 WCQ. Venezuela is getting better and better, before 2002, they were some sort of San Marino, after that they have beat Uruguay in Montevideo and Argentina at home. It is a long process, each team plays everyone else. Coaches are sacked, players suffer (Messi), and games are played with such a passion that is not seen enywhere else.
They've done very well in both, but R16 advancement alone doesn't tell you about the quality of performance the way elo touches upon. 6 of SAs 10 teams have had big elo jumps from today going back to June 07, but most of those saw most (or all) of that increase in the last 4 years. Brazil, Uruguay, and Ven have been flat from 2007-2011-2015 (based upon elo at least). Only Paraguay has dropped. UEFA has trended the other way. Looking at the top 12 today, GER and BEL are up. Italy and France are down. NED and ESP spike in the middle but are flat overall. Everyone else is pretty consistently flat: ENG, CRO, SUI, SWE, UKR, POR. Most of these are down marginally. A Brazil cup might have some influence here but I don't think that explains the full difference. Continental advantage is pretty small in studies. Some of it might be random. I suspect a portion is part of a trend though. Outside of the normal UEFA gang of 7, we are seeing fewer Euro teams making deeper WC runs than before. BEL did last time and they look to be legit. Turkey was the last outsider QF in 2002. They looked nice v Brazil in the knockout but had an easier road to the QF and Semis. There were 8 such teams in the prior 3 WCs (90-98). Some of that is probably due to the decline of Eastern European domestic leagues post Cold War. It appears that SA is catching up.
Someone typed this out, and in their minds it made perfect sense. My God man, my God, please tell me this is a social behaviors experiment you are doing for school, in which you post a completely ridiculous nonsensical comment and wait to see if people fight over it.
The ROW is catching up to and in some cases surpassing the second tier Euros. I agree that the disintegration of Eastern Europe has been a factor. 20 years ago the thought of a Japan, Korea, Australia, US, etc advancing to the second round at the expense of a Euro was almost inconceivable. Now is it about a 50/50 proposition. Also the second tier South Americans have (at least recently) surpassed the second tier Euros. Colombia, with its population, may have staying power. Uruguay and Chile are more iffy. I have no idea if Paraguay will right the ship or not. They were tough as nails for 4 straight WCs before this last cycle.
I think Uruguay will have a difficult time, but I think Chile (and others like bigger Ecuador) will be fine. Decent living conditions but not sit in the sofa and get fat playing video games levels of affluence are probably good. As is the fact that for those two (and some others), soccer is pretty much it no rugby, hockey, basketball, etc to contend with, unlike Europe. They should be able to punch above their weight.
Lets not forgot its almost impossible to come out with all 3 points in Ecuador as well as anywhere else the average away wins over all 1o teams is 1.3 something like that
In the 72 CONMEBOL qualifiers for World Cup 2014 (excluding the playoff vs. Jordan), there were 42 home wins, 13 away wins, and 17 draws. The average points per game was 1.99 for the home team and 0.78 for the away team, with 71.9% of the points earned at home. In the 90 CONMEBOL qualifiers for World Cup 2010 (excluding the playoff vs. Costa Rica), there were 47 home wins, 21 away wins, and 22 draws. The average points per game was 1.81 for the home team and 0.94 for the away team with 65.7% of the points earned at home.
Among the 22 average points-per-game leaders listed on the FIFA World Cup all-time table there are 18 UEFA and three CONMEBOL members. This is the only reasonable comparison method, since 50% to 60% of all CONMEBOL teams qualify for a World Cup, compared to only 24% from UEFA. FIFA World Cup results since 1990: UEFA - 5 titles (2 x Germany, France, Italy, Spain), 4 runner-ups, 7 third places CONMEBOL - 2 titles (Brazil), 3 runner-ups, 0 third places Comparing a confederation of ten members (CONMEBOL) to one with 54 (UEFA) is statistical nonsense. Microstates like San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Andorra or Faeroe Islands, along with a large number of other small nations, don't stand a chance in terms of ever becoming a factor in world football. However, the nine best UEFA nations by ppg (9 among the first 11) outcompete the nine CONMEBOL members to ever participate in a World Cup (9 among the first 68), hands down. For the last quarter-century CONMEBOL has been Brazil and, to a lesser degree, Argentina while UEFA has seen four different countries winning it all. These dick-measuring contests are useless but since the topic has been brought up, I felt like answering it based on statistics, not biased emotions. I have great respect for both confederations.
Apples to Oranges. I never liked these comparisons. its all too complex. there are so many factors as to why a country or region consistantly perform at high or low levels. you also have to consider team management, a countries history, infrastructure , cultures and other socio-economic things that happen in the background. i will say things have improved a lot in conmebol. this years copa america for example is among the most competative. i dont think theres a clear favorite and theres many teams and world class players vying to win it all. world cup qualifying is an absolute pain in the ass too. even against the "minnows".
could one not just as easily compare the 9 worst EUFA nations by ppg to the nine Conmebol members ever to qualify. Your method here really slants the data. Earlier you rightly say comparison can be difficult giving the different size of the continents. And I agree. But your method in this paragraph cherry picks the very best of Europe to compare with basically all of Conmebol. So Bolivia who had one bad WC counts, but Slovenia, Serbia, and Scotland, who all have been nothing but failures mulitple times are not counted. For this method to have any validity one would need to compare ALL European qualifiers with all Conmebol qualifiers, and factor out all intra-confed games. Doing so, I suspect Europe may still have the edge. For the last 2 WCs, Conmebol has been better. Who has been historically better, probably Europe. Who is currently and recently better, probably Conmebol. Eufa has also had many more countries go 3 and out and finish dead last in their group than Conmebol has. If you want to exclude poor performing Euro qualifiers and say they do not count, perhaps Europe should give up some of their spots so those teams do not show up in the first place. This expansion of the Euros may not be a good thing, given they will have many more teams, who by your criterion, do not count.
It sure would be interesting if they had a tournament with Confederation all stars . my prediction would be : Conmebol UEFA Africa Concacaf Asia With Conmebol and Uefa alternating winners maybe even Africa playing a few finals .
UEFA has far smaller nations. Quite simply population matters. Imagine breaking Brazil up into several countries, would those countries have won 5 world cups amongst them (after giving S America more berths)? I think it is less likely. However, that does also mean that UEFA overall has almost double the population of South America. I do think on balance South America punches above it's weight compared to UEFA.