The 2022 Qatar World Cup has been hailed as the best in the tournament’s 92 year history, producing moments of magic, upsets, nail-biting finishes and amazing goals. This World Cup will also be remembered for signalling a serious challenge by African, Asian and North/Central American teams to football’s dominance by teams from Europe and South […]
The 2022 Qatar World Cup has been hailed as the best in the tournament’s 92 year history, producing moments of magic, upsets, nail-biting finishes and amazing goals. This World Cup will also be remembered for signalling a serious challenge by African, Asian and North/Central American teams to football’s dominance by teams from Europe and South America — the two regions that created the tournament in 1930 and have dominated it since its inception.
Europe asserted its dominance of the World Cup in 1934 when Italy played host, claiming 12 of the 16 slots, with South America , the USA and Egypt sharing the rest. No Asian team was represented. The 1938 tournament in France repeated the 1934 euro-centric pattern, with Europe getting 13 slots, South America two and Asia one. There was no African team.
The pattern of non-participation of African and Asian teams or participation of only one team from both regions, which were treated as a single group, continued until 1970 when for the first time in the tournament’s history both Africa and Asia were guaranteed one slot each. Africa and Asia increased their share of participation to two each in 1982 when the number of teams in the competition was raised from 16 to 24.
By the 1990s African, Asian and Central American-Caribbean football federations had become active members of FIFA and accounted for a majority of the organisation’s membership. The clamour for more slots for non-European/South American teams increased, leading to the current 32-team format that was adopted in 1998. Africa’s share increased to five, Asia’s to 3.5 and South America’s remained the same . Importantly, Europe’s share fell from 58% in 1994 to 43.75% in 1998.
The only other tournaments in which an African or Asian team qualified for the quarter finals before Qatar were in 2002 when South Korea went as far as the semi-finals and Senegal the quarter finals, and in 2010 when Ghana qualified for the quarter finals. Ghana was minutes away from qualifying for the semi-finals but a goal-bound shot was flagrantly stopped by the Uruguayan striker, Luis Suarez; and the Ghana striker, Asamoah Gyan, missed the awarded penalty.
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