Episode

Why Does Little Western Europe Rule International Soccer?

Podcast
The Soccernomics Podcast
Published
Jun 9, 2026
Duration seconds
1953
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-soccernomics-podcast/episodes/Why-Does-Little-Western-Europe-Rule-International-Soccer-e3khhni
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https://anchor.fm/s/1127c35b8/podcast/play/121210034/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-5-9%2F425782507-44100-2-0490ac77ea426.m4a
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/the-soccernomics-podcast-7869249/episodes/why-does-little-western-europe-rule-international-soccer
Markdown
/podcast/the-soccernomics-podcast-7869249/why-does-little-western-europe-rule-international-soccer.md

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Summary

When Simon and Stefan first wrote Soccernomics, they predicted that the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Iraq were destiened to become the kings of the sport. That turned out to be wrong...well, so far at least. Instead, ove the last five World Cups, Argentina is the only non-European team to have finished in the top three. So what's behind Europe's (specifically Western Europe's) domination of the game?