The World Cup Champions' Curse

15/11/22 748

The first World Cup tournament was played in 1930 and there have been 21 World Cup finals. However, only 8 nations have won the competition, 5 of which come from Europe and the remaining 3 are from South America.

In addition, only two countries have won the World Cup back-to-back. Italy won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938 and Brazil won the World Cup in 1958 and 1962.

The statistics above mean 6 nations have failed to defend the World Cup and both Italy and Brazil have failed to defend the trophy on other occasions.

There is nothing to be ashamed about failing to win the World Cup back-to-back. Managers and players leave the national team between tournaments and squads can look completely different from one World Cup to the next.

However, there has been a worrying trend in recent World Cup competitions of the previous winner being eliminated at the group stage of the tournament.

If we go back to the 2002 World Cup, France entered the tournament as defending champions. They were drawn in a group with Senegal, Uruguay, and Denmark.

The French were expected to top the group but having suffered a shock loss in their opening match against Senegal, France failed to recover. They picked up just a point thanks to a 0-0 draw with Uruguay and finished bottom of the group.

Moving to the 2010 World Cup and Italy were the defending champions having tasted success in Germany four years earlier. Italy could not have asked for a better draw for the 2010 World Cup, with Paraguay, Slovakia, and New Zealand in their group.

Having been held by Paraguay in their opening fixture, Italy suffered an embarrassing 1-1 draw against New Zealand and lost their final game against Slovakia, seeing them finish bottom of Group F.

Spain won the 2010 World Cup, beating Netherlands in the final. They were drawn with Netherlands, Chile, and Australia. Not an easy looking group and so it proved as Netherlands took revenge for the 2010 final by thumping Spain 5-1 in the opening round of fixtures in the group.

That put the Spanish on the back foot and having gone down 2-0 against Chile in the second game, the win over Australia in their final group match was not enough as Spain finished third.

The most recent World Cup took place in Russia in 2018 with Germany as defending champions. Having suffered a shock 1-0 defeat in their opening group game against Mexico, Germany bounced back to beat Sweden 2-1 thanks to a late winning goal.

A win against South Korea would have been enough to see Germany progress but they conceded two late goals in what was a fantastic victory for South Korea but a nightmare for the Germans.

The pressure will be on France to stop the curse of the World Cup winners in 2022. They have suffered themselves in 2002 and will not want to be the first defending champions to exit at the group stage twice.

With Denmark, Tunisia, and Australia in their group, it would be a shock to see the French eliminated but recent history shows it can happen.