Have You Noticed

Well here is something that might be interesting for everyone. It's about the World Cup. While going through the results and the standings of the previous World Cup's I found out this very odd or you might call it interesting thing. Here we go:

1986 WC: France were 3rd and failed to qulify for the next WC.
1990 WC: England were 4th and failed to qualify for the next WC.
1994 WC: Sweden were 3rd and failed to qualify for the next WC.
1998 WC: Holland were 4th and failed to qualify for the next WC.
2002 WC: Turkey were 3rd and ???????????????????????????????


Well will this rellay happen with Turkey. If it will then no team would like to be 4th in 2006 WC if they ever know these statistics.

You are right, there are always teams that don't do well or as well immediately after surprising everybody.
There are also examples of teams that made it but just couldn't be as good anymore like Croatia from 1998

Actually I have heard of this before, slightly different version though. It is something about "the curse of the 3rd place in World Cup". The 3rd place team in World Cup always failed to qualify for the European Cups in two years later. The latest victim was Turkey, who miserably failed to pass through Latvia in the playoff, a huge upset then.

I don't have data right now, but maybe later I can dig it up.

Teams from smaller football nations quite expectedly do not seem to be able to maintain consistancy.

I predict a similar fate for Greece in the next European Cup