The World Cup has produced 8 championships so far, 7 of which are currently considered world-class teams, except Uruguay, which can only be regarded as the world's second-tier team.
This is really not underestimating Uruguay, from the South American World Cup qualifiers in recent years, Uruguay is not to mention the competition with Brazil and Argentina, even compared with Colombia, Chile and even Ecuador, the advantage is not great. Although Uruguay is one of the traditional top three in South America, they have missed the World Cup many times since the 90s, such as '94, '98, '06, and Brazil and Argentina have never been absent. Uruguay's best result in the World Cup in nearly four decades was only the semi-finals of 2010. Obviously, they are not to mention the other 7 World Cup winners, even the Netherlands, Portugal are much better than them.
Uruguay's splendor came in the black and white era. At that time, they were indeed the top teams in the world, much earlier than Brazil and Argentina became famous. Uruguay was the host and champion of the first World Cup. It was also in those years that Uruguay established itself in world football. Although it is now reduced to second-rate, Uruguay's heritage is still very deep because of the glory of that time.
Moreover, from 1930 to 1950, there were four World Cups in these 20 years, and Uruguay set a record during this period, which is absolutely unprecedented, that is, it is almost impossible for any team to replicate in the future.
The record is that as long as you participate in the World Cup, you will win the championship.
In these four World Cups, Uruguay has actually only played two, that is, the first and fourth. In fact, the second and third Uruguay should have participated, but in order to protest that many European teams did not want to participate in the first World Cup, they also chose not to go to Europe to play the World Cup.
Participated in the World Cup twice, won the cup twice, and won 100% of the championship. Who can replicate such achievements in the future? Even Uruguay itself could not have been, after all, they lost their aura after 1950 and participated in the World Cup many times with lackluster results. If there is any team that can do this, it will only be those that have not played in the World Cup so far. But in the current world football pattern, the teams that have not participated in the World Cup are all fish-belly troops from all continents, such as the Faroe Islands in Europe, Liechtenstein, Venezuela in South America, and most second- and third-rate teams in Africa, Asia and North America. These teams can't achieve this unless a group of talented players suddenly emerge to sustain them to create an era.
In fact, Italy in the early years also came close to this record, they missed the first World Cup, but won the second and third editions. However, in the fourth World Cup, they traveled to Brazil and failed to achieve good results. So they are still a little short of Uruguay's record.
Embarrassingly, neither Uruguay nor Italy are in a very good position at the moment. Uruguay needless to say, as for Italy, they have not brushed their presence in the World Cup for a long time. The 2021 European Championship winner is now just a fortuitous event. What they urgently need to accomplish now is to get back to the World Cup as soon as possible. Let's see what trends these two teams will have in the coming years.