The Canadian national team relies heavily on superstar captain Alphonso Davies, who plays his club soccer with Bayern Munich in Germany.FRANK GUNN/The Canadian Press
John Rapley is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is an author and academic whose books include Why Empires Fall and Twilight of the Money Gods.
For most of its history, World Cup winners formed a small club. Until 1998, the trophy circulated among just six nations – four, really, since Uruguay’s and England’s wins lay in the distant past. As a result, it was long said that soccer was a game in which 22 players chased a ball for 90 minutes, and then Germany won.
But Germany’s humbling by a minnow this week showed the extent to which a generation of globalization has changed world soccer. And it’s not just the three-time winner that today struggles against up-and-coming teams. Netherlands was punished by an African upstart, Spain drew with the minnow Cape Verde, Brazil barely eked out a victory against Japan, England got a fright from DR Congo and the once-great Italy, which still sports four stars on their jerseys, doesn’t even make it to tournaments these days.
How the mighty have fallen. It’s not that the great teams have got worse. Most everyone else has got better. That reveals a form of globalization that works – because it raises everyone.
It all began with a judgment by a European court. For generations, soccer leagues in Europe maintained quotas, limiting the number of foreigners a team could place on its roster. In 1995, however, the European Court of Justice ruled that this practice violated the right to freedom of movement that was enshrined in the European Union’s treaty. Henceforth, the clubs there were at liberty to hire as many EU citizens as they wanted.
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With the then recently formed English Premier League leading the way, several leagues then lifted all nationality quotas, enabling clubs to make the planet their hunting ground for talent. In 1999, Chelsea, then coached by an Italian, became the first club ever to field a starting 11 comprised entirely of foreigners. Six years later Arsenal took this to the next level when the legendary French manager Arsene Wenger named an entire squad, including substitutes, without a single British or Irish player on it.
With English clubs now able to recruit some of the best players in the world, the quality of play reached new heights, and the Premier League established itself as the world’s best and most competitive league. Money poured in and investment rose to meet this new demand.
Not least, the demand from television audiences, as English football went from being a Saturday outing in working-class communities to being a newly branded global product. Until the 1990s, it had been difficult to see games outside of England; today, the Premier League is beamed into some 900 million homes across the world, with a total audience reach of nearly two billion. Other European leagues, while not reaching quite the same levels, followed suit, and today fans across the planet have their favourite European clubs.
Here in Canada, European football went from being a Saturday evening novelty show on local PBS stations, to becoming one of the most popular sports products. This vast new flow of revenue enriched not only the league, enabling owners to pay high prices for the best players, but also giving lower English leagues the money needed to improve their academies – the factories for new talent.
As foreigners took over British pitches, traditionalists bemoaned the loss of an ‘English style’ of football. But since old style had long consisted mainly of kicking balls downfield and hoping for the best, while trying to break as many opponents’ limbs as possible, few grieved the loss. The fact was that the best club football ever played was then happening before them.
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What resulted was not just an improved domestic game across Europe. The players themselves improved. Foreign footballers like George Weah and Didier Drogba, who in earlier generations would have sold their craft in poor, often badly run leagues in developing countries, now could go to Europe and compete with the best.
This, then, had a twofold effect on the game. Not only was the standard of club football raised as the best players from across the world made their homes in Europe, but because they were playing against all the other top players, their own game reached new heights. When international tournaments then came around, they played for their home countries rather than their host ones, raising the quality of their national teams in the process.
Thus, today, not only does Alphonso Davies help improve Bayern Munich, but the German club has improved Davies. When he then plays for Canada, he helps lift the performance of our entire team.
And so here we are, in 2026. The best teams in this year’s World Cup are still traditional powerhouses like France and Argentina. But new stars are rising and there will be more upsets as the game’s hierarchy shifts.