Can a European nation win a World Cup in South America:-

Can a European nation win a World Cup in South America:-
A little more than a month before the start of the World Cup in Brazil, the country’s most famous ambassador, the man known as the greatest soccer player ever, stood in a Miami art studio and spoke of his reveries of a final between the two powerhouses of South American soccer, Argentina and Brazil. Pelé, of course, would prefer that Brazil win, just as it did three times when he played. Another dream would be for Brazil to beat Uruguay in a late round, thereby avenging its loss in the final in 1950, the last time Brazil hosted the World Cup. That loss left Pelé‘s father and all of his father’s friends in tears. Pelé was nine years old at the time. It remains one of his earliest memories of seeing grown men cry. Such visions have been sweeping South America on the eve of the World Cup, which begins Thursday when Brazil faces Croatia in São Paulo. From Bogotá to Buenos Aires, in Quito, Santiago and Salvador, there is a hope, however quixotic, that South America will rise this year to become the world’s dominant soccer continent. They would lay waste to the giants of Europe, with their lectures about technical superiority, and how it trumps the creativity and flair that South Americans have brought to the game for a century.
The World Cup is many things—a sporting event, a spectacle, and the world’s most peaceful demonstration of full-throated nationalism. It is also the fairest and most competitive global athletic competition. In the Olympic Games, huge or extremely wealthy countries dominate. But countries small and large and rich and poor have excelled at the World Cup. Feelings of national and continental identity can run even deeper. For decades, conventional wisdom has held that South America, the land of street soccer, Futsal (a miniature version of the game played with a small, heavy ball) and foot-volleyball, produces the greatest players. But with the exception of Brazil, Europe now produces the greatest teams, with their hierarchical training academies and sophisticated coaching. This is the land that created the patient defensive juggernauts from Germany and Italy, and the Netherlands’ "Total Football" revolutionaries, who created a system in which any player plays any position at any time, like a machine with interchangeable parts.
South America has always celebrated individual style as much as results. This is the continent that produced magicians like Pelé and Diego Maradona, who could make the ball dance over the heads and through the legs of their European opponents. However, as more South American players have infiltrated the European league, South America’s best national teams have begun to take a far more disciplined and results-oriented approach to international competition. With the World Cup returning for the first time since 1978 to South America, this represents the continent’s best chance to assert its superiority in the world’s most popular sport. No European team has ever hoisted the trophy in South America. To win the tournament on home soil and get three or even four teams in the semifinals, as Europe often does, suddenly seems within reach.
Still, before any fans pencil an All-South American semifinal into their brackets, know that hopes for World Cup hosts have risen before, only to collapse once the games began. Four years ago in South Africa, that continent felt certain it would produce its first semifinalist, heralding a new modern Africa. Just one team, Ghana, made it past the group stage into the round of 16. The Black Stars then beat the U.S. but lost a quarterfinal game to Uruguay. Europe does enjoy several built-in advantages over South America that have nothing to do with a debate over the value of South American creativity vs. European discipline and organization. Europe accounts for 13 of the 32 World Cup teams this year. Also, it has more big countries, and thus deeper talent pools, than South America. The best explanation for Brazil’s five world championships and Germany’s three may be their populations. With more than 200 million people, Brazil is the world’s largest soccer-obsessed country. But South America’s next-largest country is Colombia at 48 million, followed by Argentina with 42 million. There are seven European countries with populations of 45 million or more, including Germany with 82 million.
All I can say fingers crossed and I do believe that a European Team will win the World Cup in South America.