30 greatest teams in World Cup history

In anticipation of the 2018 World Cup, let’s take a look at the 30 best World Cup teams of all time.

The World Cup is one of the most anticipated and most watched sporting events, but it only comes around once every four years. In the years in between, fans turn to competitions like the Euro or the Gold Cup. However, nothing is quite like the World Cup. The last edition of the international tournament, which occurred in 2014, saw 3.2 billion people tune in. A whopping one billion tuned in to watch the final between Germany and Argentina.

The concept of the World Cup is simple. Over the course of three years, international teams battle through qualifiers to gain entry into the competition. In essence, the best teams from each continent, except Antarctica for obvious reasons, qualify for the summer tournament. Those countries are then sorted out into group stages based on the pool in which they are seeded. After the group stages, the top two teams from each group advance to the knock-out stages. From then on, it is win or go home. The winner of the final is then dubbed “the greatest team in the world.”

This year’s competition will be without some household names including the United States, the Netherlands, Chile and Italy. These nations missing out is a testament to the quality of the teams that qualified ahead of them, and as a result, we are in for quite a treat.

Until we know who among the 2018 qualifiers has the makings of a historically great World Cup team, we’re looking back at the best teams of the past, ranked by a combination of talent, watch-ability and success. For example, any team with Pele on it is on the list and most of the cup winners are also here. Watch-ability just refers to how enjoyable it was to watch the team play. With that in mind, let’s take a look at number 30.