Think football is not changing? Look at this list

This year’s World Youth Championship sees a bunch of new faces: further confirmation that football’s power structure is continuing to change rapidly.

Have a look at the list of teams that qualified, starting with traditional powers:

Netherlands (hosts)
Spain
Italy
Brazil
Germany
Argentina

Nothing special there.

Now subtract the fact that UEFA (Europe) gets 6 teams in the tournament and that only Brazil and Argentina have ever won a World Cup outside UEFA teams, look that the list that is left:

Australia
Benin
Canada
Colombia
China
Chile
Egypt
Honduras
Japan
Morocco
Nigeria
Panama
South Korea
Switzerland
Syria
Turkey
Ukraine
USA

Notice the nations which are now regularly appearing at World Cups now like Morocco, Nigeria, Japan, China, South Korea, Turkey and the USA. When the national side is growing on both youth and senior levels, it’s a clear upward trend.

Then we start to see minnows like Benin, Honduras which has not appeared in a World Cup since 1982, Syria and Panama. Egypt has not been to a cup since 1990.

Unfortunately nations like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, much of the African continent and some of Eastern Europe still show a significant gap at the youth level but some progress is better than none.