# Why Does Little Western Europe Rule International Soccer?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-soccernomics-podcast-7869249/why-does-little-western-europe-rule-international-soccer
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-soccernomics-podcast-7869249/why-does-little-western-europe-rule-international-soccer.md
Podcast: [The Soccernomics Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-soccernomics-podcast-7869249)
Published: 2026-06-09T05:15:57+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-soccernomics-podcast/episodes/Why-Does-Little-Western-Europe-Rule-International-Soccer-e3khhni
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/1127c35b8/podcast/play/121210034/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-5-9%2F425782507-44100-2-0490ac77ea426.m4a
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-soccernomics-podcast-7869249/episodes/why-does-little-western-europe-rule-international-soccer
Duration seconds: 1953

## Resource

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?

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## Transcript

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