Why the Fifa World Cup still belongs to the old empires

The World Cup's enduring hierarchy is no accident. Its traditional powers continue to benefit from historical advantages in migration, institutions and talent development that stretch far beyond the football pitch.

Several teams have already secured places in the Round of 32 after winning their opening two matches, and football’s old aristocracy – France, Germany, Argentina and company – are once again gliding towards the business end of the tournament while everyone else scrambles for a seat at the table.

This is more than a sporting pattern. It raises a question football rarely asks out loud: is the Fifa World Cup still, in some sense, a tournament dominated by the old empires?

The answer is yes, though not in the simplistic way the phrase suggests. Matches are decided over 90 minutes, but footballing success is built over generations by the same forces – human capital, migration and institutional development – that have long shaped global economic power.

A winners’ circle that barely changes

The numbers make the pattern difficult to dismiss as coincidence. Across 22 editions of the World Cup since 1930, only eight countries have lifted the trophy, all from just two continents.

Europe accounts for 12 titles across five nations, while South America holds the remaining 10 through just three countries: Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

For all football’s claims of global reach, the tournament has long resembled a duopoly with better branding.

The concentration runs deeper than trophy counts. France has won two World Cups and reached four finals. Spain strung together Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 – one of the most remarkable runs in the sport’s history.

Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium tell a similar story. Despite populations of just 10 to 18 million, they have consistently produced golden generations that far exceed what demographics alone would predict.

These outcomes are often attributed to coaching or tactics, but those, too, are products of deeper processes. Economists call this path dependency: countries inherit advantages that continue paying dividends long after their original source has faded from view.

Colonialism exported more than flags and trade

Colonial rule did not “gift” football to the colonised world. It imposed systems of administration, education and mobility designed primarily to serve imperial control and, more importantly, economic extraction.

Football travelled along those same routes through colonial schools, military institutions, port cities and expatriate enclaves before taking root among local populations, who later made the game their own.

The British spread organised football across parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, while French and Portuguese imperial networks did the same in their own territories. Portugal’s reach extended as far as Cape Verde, which qualified for its first-ever World Cup this year through those same networks.

What endured after empire was not merely a sport, but a set of linguistic, migratory and institutional linkages that later shaped how football talent moved, developed and was absorbed into global systems.

That helps explain why footballing influence still maps onto old imperial geography. The game is global, but the routes through which talent is discovered and developed rarely are.

South America fits the pattern, too

At first glance, South America appears to complicate the argument. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay are among football’s most decorated nations, yet none were colonial powers. If anything, they were former colonies themselves.

But formal colonial rule is only part of the picture. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Britain exercised enormous influence across South America through trade, railways and finance – an empire in economic practice, if not administration.

British sailors, railway workers and engineers helped establish some of the region’s earliest football clubs. Peñarol, now Uruguay’s most decorated club with 48 league titles and the first winner of the Copa Libertadores in 1960, began life in 1891 as the cricket club of the British-run Central Uruguay Railway.

Football arrived in Argentina and Brazil through similar commercial and expatriate networks, taking root in port cities and railway towns before spreading more widely.

Export-led growth in beef and grain also attracted huge numbers of European migrants, particularly from Italy and Spain. By 1914, nearly a third of Argentina’s population – and roughly half of Buenos Aires’ – had been born abroad.

The more relevant question is not who formally flew the colonial flag, but who was plugged into the trade, migration and institutional networks of the era. By that measure, South America was deeply embedded in the same global system that helped shape football elsewhere.

Migration networks became talent networks

Talent is widely distributed. Opportunity, however, is not.

That is why migration matters so much. Countries that can identify, train and retain talent across borders enjoy advantages that compound over time. England draws on Commonwealth-linked migration, the Netherlands on ties to Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean, Belgium on migration from Central Africa, while France’s modern success is inseparable from its postcolonial connections to North and West Africa.

France’s 2018 World Cup-winning squad illustrates the point. Roughly 15 of its 23 players had African family roots, but they were products of the French development system, not simply raw talent arriving at its doorstep.

Migration networks do not benefit only former colonial powers.

Morocco offers the clearest counterexample. More than 70 per cent of its 26-man squad were born outside the country, most of them in France and Spain, the two powers that once divided Morocco into colonial protectorates. That share has risen from 14 of 26 players in 2022 and just two of 23 in 1998, the year captain Achraf Hakimi, who was born in Madrid, came into the world.

Rather than viewing this as a loss, Morocco has turned transnational connectivity into a strategic asset, fielding a team that combines the polish of European academies with the cohesion of a national project built around its diaspora.

History shapes the field, but it does not decide the result

If it is not already obvious, I am in no way celebrating colonialism. The economic and social costs imposed on colonised societies were profound, and many of their consequences remain visible today in inequality and weak institutions.

But history also leaves behind networks, languages and migration corridors that can be repurposed as assets rather than inherited as liabilities.

Morocco demonstrates this clearly. Its rise is not a gift from history but the result of deliberate strategy: investment in football infrastructure, a strengthened federation and the active use of diaspora connections.

The same migration routes that once reflected dependence have been transformed into channels of recruitment and competitiveness, providing the clearest evidence that colonial legacy is raw material rather than destiny.

The real lesson goes beyond football

As millions watch the final group-stage matches, attention will naturally focus on tactics and moments of brilliance. But the dominance of football’s traditional powers reflects the cumulative effects of human capital, migration networks and institutional quality – the same ingredients that shape economic success more broadly. Football is one of the ways history continues to shape the present.

So, is the World Cup still a tournament between old empires? In part, yes. But the more useful lesson is that history shapes the playing field long before the first whistle blows, without determining the result. Success rests on institutions, infrastructure and talent development, not shortcuts.

Cape Verde illustrates that lesson on a smaller scale. A country of just over half a million people, it has drawn on Lusophone migration networks into Portugal to punch well above its weight by building rather than shortcutting.

For countries such as Malaysia, that is the sobering lesson. Footballing success, much like economic transformation, cannot be summoned by passion alone – a point this year’s heritage-player saga underscored rather bluntly, culminating in the country’s defeat to Cape Verde. It requires patient investment, credible institutions and a willingness to think beyond the next match.

Dr Mohd Zaidi Md Zabri is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Islamic Economics, Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia. With Malaysia absent from the World Cup yet again, he consoles himself by turning the tournament into an economics lecture nobody asked for.