~snip~
Yes 2026 tournament will be a great tournament, because many of the teams that did not play for the year edition will play in the 2026 version. But this one you mentioned China, I have not seen china played in a world not even in the qualification stage including India. These two countries are always excepted. I think because of their inability to quantify at the qualification level that making then not to appear in the world cup tournaments.
Yeah, one thing some people forget is that the world cup is an incredibly competitive tournament.
Even Italy failed to qualify for Qatar 2022.
So it's not really the case that FIFA doesn't like certain countries, or things like that, it's actually that Europe and South America consistently produce the best teams for the competition, and therefore end up winning the most trophies.
If anything, I could argue that Europe and South America should have even more slots than what they have at the moment, as many talented countries from there couldn't qualify.
You forgot to mention that Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the second time in a row, which is clearly not a coincidence but an indicator of the crisis of Italian national football.
As for the rest, the European and South American national teams are still better than the national teams from other continents and achieve better and better results at the world championships, but this difference is getting smaller and smaller at each world championship, and the Asian and African national teams achieve better and better results at each the next world championship.
It is no coincidence that South Korea was fourth at the 2002 World Cup and Morocco fourth at this World Cup.
And in the future, there will be even more successes like this of Asian and African national teams.
Yes the continents of Europe and South America traditionally produce the strongest
teams, it was great to see Morocco reach the semi finals and maybe they will achieve
the same or better at the next one.
How did everyone's betting go during the competition and especially for the Final?
Sadly for my own wallet I had France to win.