For the past two World Cups I’ve been looking at how each of the confederacies that compose FIFA do in the tournament. I do this by checking their effectiveness, in terms of how many of the teams that get to the last 32, survive the Group Stage to reach the final 16. Here is what I wrote for 2006 and here what I wrote for 2010. In the earlier piece I argue how unfair the system is to the South American countries, in the latter I change my mind and decide it is this unfairness that has made us so strong.

There are six confederacies in FIFA, roughly representing each continent. UEFA is probably the best known and the largest, it is composed of about 54 European countries with different levels of membership. It has achieved 10 World Cups divided by five different champions, namely, Italy (4), Germany (3), Spain (1), France (1), and England (1). CONMEBOL is the South America confederacy. It is the smallest with only 10 countries, all with the same level of membership. It has achieved 9 World Cups divided by three different champions, namely, Brazil (5), Argentina (2), and Uruguay (2). It is the most successful confederacy by far. The rest of the confederacies has not won a single World Cup. CONCACAF represents North and Central America, together with the caribbean, it has 40 members. AFC represents Asia it has about 38 members, from the middle east to the far east. CAF represents Africa with about 45 countries. And finally, OFC represents Oceania with 14 countries.

Each confederacy has a certain number of fixed spots in the World Cup proper, which is actually a play-off and finals with 32 teams from around the World. The number of spots for each confederacy is a heavily politicized decision made after selecting the host country. The host always plays in the World Cup and, normally, that doesn’t reduce the number for the rest of the confederacy to which the host belongs.

The following Table gives the fixed number of spots for each confederacy, the number of teams that go to an intercontinental rematch and the number of teams that reach the final 32. This is for the current World Cup of 2014.

Notice that OFC just gets one spot in the intercontinental rematch. Australia reached the last 32 in 2006, after that Australia decided to change to the AFC, which made it easier for them to qualify to the last 32. Notice that FIFA is so powerful that it can honestly change continents at will. Well, “honestly” is clearly an exaggeration. New Zealand is the only other country from the OFC to reach the last 32 (at least, since 1998). CONMEBOL normally has 4 fixed spots which is an outstanding 40% of its members, but is less than half of UEFA fixed spots. CONMEBOL gets one more to the intercontinental rematch, compared with Europe 8. Luckily, this team makes it almost every time, only CONCACAF can make a similar claim. Since the 2014 World Cup is being played in Brazil as I write this, CONMEBOL is brining an unprecedented 6 teams to the cup.

Throughout the rest of this article I will present charts and numbers from World Cups starting in 1998 to the present one (2014). The World Cup in 1998 was the first to take 32 teams. Previous World Cups used to be 24 teams affairs with rules to determined the best of the third places in order to complete the last 16, hence, not directly comparable to those from 1998 on.

The first chart is the number of teams from each confederacy that reach the final 32. That is, the number of teams in each confederacy that reached the World Cup tournament.

Noticed how UEFA is up there, while CONMEBOL is down, pretty much, at the same level of all the others confederacy, save the Cinderella OFC. To be fair, UEFA has been consistently reducing its number of spots in the final, mostly because of the new intercontinental rematch introduced for 2010. Also, CONMBOL is almost as small a confederacy as OCF is. In terms of percentages it is the one that brings more teams to the last 32.

Is this system fair? The way I’ve decided to answer that is to look at how many teams reach the final 16, that is, which teams survive the Group Elimination Stage of the World Cup, the one that finished yesterday for the 2014 Brazil World Cup. Here is the corresponding Graph.

Notice how the story changes drastically in this graph. Now, there is a clear separation, at least in latter years, from CONMEBOL performance, getting closer and closer to UEFA numbers. Mind you, this graph is in absolute numbers! The World Cup in Korea was a particularly bad one for CONMEBOL and it still tied for second place.

Things get even more interesting when we talk about effective rate, that is, what percentage of the teams that reach the final 32 manage to survive the Group Stage and reach the final 16. This is represented in the next graph, I have deleted the OFC because of its lack of import. Only Australia reached the last 16 in 2006.

Noticed how CONMEBOL outperforms everybody with an exception in the the 2002 World Cup, played in South Korea and Japan, with special rules to avoid the host countries from playing each other. Furthermore, CONCACAF has consistently beaten UEFA in the last two World Cups. When we look at aggregates we get a better picture, I think. CONMEBOL is the absolute leader with an average effective rate of 75.67%. Think about that number, it means that, on average, three quarters of the teams from CONMEBOL survive the Group Stage. Next, is UEFA with a 58.8% average effective rate, followed closely by CONCACAF with 53.5%. Notice that CONCACAF has bested UEFA and gotten closer to CONMEBOl in the last two World Cups (2010 and 2014). The other three confederacies are close to 20%, so, much, much lower. Those three confederacies occupy 9 positions of the last 32 and only 2 or 3 of the last 16.

Of course, the reason for all this is politics and not sports. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a competition of the best 32 countries in the World Cup? Of course, FIFA rank is equally political and misguided, there are 7 teams in the first 32 out of the World Cup, most of them from UEFA! What gives? It is obvious to me that the World Cup would improve only if more teams from CONMEBOL and CONCACAF are allowed in the final 32.