I know it's an American article but I think it's far more interesting that 4 out of the 5 most populous countries (China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia), representing 3.3 billion people and 40% of the Earth’s population, has a combined total of 2 appearances at the World Cup (1938 Indonesia as Dutch East Indies and 2002 China). It’s a huge untapped market and not that people don’t love or care about football in those countries either.

Meanwhile relatively small countries like Uruguay, Portugal, and Croatia has a long history of great teams and producing insane talents.

All I know to write about here is China: school is one massive obstacle for professional sports. Lots of kids in China try out tons of different hobbies and sports, and any sport or activity you can think of likely has a number of clubs in bigger cities, enough to create a community of people with a serious interest. I'm thinking of Chinese kids I know personally who are into football, breakdancing, archery, ballet, drama, all kinds of stuff.

And then, right at a child's age where European scouts are noticing kids over there, in China parents are hit with massive, massive pressure to help their kids academically as best they can. Good middle school -> good high school -> good university -> good job. Unless your kid is far and away a natural talent easily exceeding their peers, you're going to hesitate to let them devote more time to professionally developing athletic ability. Athletic competition at the highest levels in China is intense due to the number of natural talents you get in a large population, and with every year that goes by without your kid quite making it into the professional-athlete track, the pressure gets higher to abandon that track and focus on academics.

So the athletic practice, even for a quite promising kid, gets sidelined for more study time and after-school classes. And this happens even for kids with parents who want them to have a balanced life without the insane pressure for academics the Chinese school system is known for. For those families it just takes the shape of cutting back the athletic practice instead of nurturing it to a possibly professional level.

One other factor that I can think of is just a culture of family interest. I don't know any Chinese men older than 45 who are into watching sports at all, whereas in the West (and also India, I think?) it's common for a family interest in sports to have already existed for generations. I do know Chinese men my age (31) who are into basketball and have young kids who might grow up with that interest. That's all anecdotal, I know, but my sample is big enough for it to be surprising to me in comparison to other places.

I can’t speak for other countries but in India cricket eclipses all other sports and drains talent. But soccer is gaining popularity recently but still long way to go.

What interesting is that unlike other nations in that list, Indonesians already love soccer to death, literally. But they're still very underrepresented in the world stage.

If you think about it, India and China already have other very popular sports. Soccer is kind of somewhat of a niche there.

Croatia is really in Europe and Europe was always solid on soccer. Same with Portugal. Uruguay is more interesting, but Brasil was always happy with soccer, as was Argentina. It is much easier to establish soccer in South America than in North America. Canadians much prefer ice hockey.