More than 83 years after 13 teams contested the inaugural competition in Uruguay, the flow of FIFA World Cup debutants has slowed to a trickle.
Of the 32 countries who have fought their way through to next year’s showpiece in Brazil, only Bosnia and Herzegovina have never been to the World Cup finals before. It was a similar story three years ago in South Africa where Slovakia were the only newcomers.
The only previous occasion when there was just the one newbie came the first time the competition visited Brazil, in 1950. Then, the newbie in question was England. At that time, though, the World Cup tournament was much smaller than it is today. In fact, just 13 teams ended up playing in it.
Pretty soon, perhaps even in Russia in five years’ time, we will witness the first World Cup with no debutants at all.
In some respects, indeed, it could be argued that we have already reached this point: many of the Bosnians who will roar on their team next summer – and Slovakians who did the same in 2010 – will, after all, already have experienced the thrill of watching their compatriots contest a World Cup. It’s just that, when they did, they were playing for Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia respectively.
This scarcity of new blood is a source of regret for me; the debutants’ progress is part of what gives the World Cup group stage its special atmosphere – never more so than in 2006 in Germany when, joy of joys, four African teams (Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo) made their bows in the same competition.
Is it, though, a problem for FIFA?
Well, let’s be honest, the governing body has bigger headaches at the moment. Numerous bigger headaches. At the same time, I don’t think this is a state of affairs they should simply shrug off.
Yes, it is inevitable that the number of first-time finalists will dwindle with the passage of time. But Bosnia will be, by my count, only the 80th nation to play in the World Cup finals (and that’s if you count USSR/Russia as two nations for the purposes of this exercise and Germany/West Germany/East Germany as three).
With 209 associations now represented at FIFA, it seems a little early to have reached the point where the flow of newcomers has all but dried up.
Furthermore, while the FIFA World Cup is far and away the most genuinely international big-time elite team sports competition, you could argue that even it is not yet completely global if your yardstick is countries that have played in the competition’s final stages.
Of the four biggest countries in population terms, two of them – India and Indonesia – have still to participate in a World Cup finals match (although the Dutch East Indies played in 1938, losing 6-0 to Hungary, while India qualified by default in 1950, but did not travel). The most populous country of all – China – has made it to the finals just once, in 2002.
In other words, countries now accounting for approximately 40% of the world’s population, have only played in one World Cup finals tournament between them, two if you count that brief and long-ago Dutch East Indies appearance.
Happily for FIFA, that does not, of course, mean that nobody in the countries concerned watches the tournament. But they have never yet had the pleasure of seeing their country’s team notch so much as a solitary World Cup finals goal.
Moving further down the list, of the 15 most populous countries, six will be represented in Brazil next year, but seven, if you will let me include Indonesia, inhabited by nearly 30% of our planet’s 7 billion-plus people, have never kicked a ball in the World Cup finals.
Six of these seven countries – India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines and Vietnam – are in Asia. And, bearing in mind that China have qualified only once, if I were FIFA, I would be keen to get more national squads in the continent as quickly as possible up to the standard of South Korea, Japan and Australia.
This dominant regional trio have made it to the last eight, five and three World Cups respectively (including 2014), but have rarely set the world alight against the traditional football powers of Europe and South America once they have got there.
Helping to ensure that World Cups continue to be enlivened by a sprinkling of debutants, at least for another few decades, is one of the very few reasons I can think of for giving a second thought to the 40-team World Cup proposal floated recently by UEFA’s Michel Platini.
Two or three newcomers per World Cup – preferably genuine newcomers, as opposed to products of European fragmentation – would be ample.
That, more or less, is what we have been used to: 80 different participants in a total of 20 World Cups gives an average of four, but of course all 13 countries were debutants at the inaugural tournament in 1930, as were a further 10 in 1934.
Sooner or later, those of us who feed on our quadrennial fix of new World Cup blood will have to wean ourselves off it – unless, that is, new countries continue to proliferate as during the past couple of decades.
With well over 130 member associations still to kick a ball in anger (or any other emotion) at a World Cup, however, it ought not to be necessary to check into detox just yet.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938