The top four teams from South America qualify directly for the tournament, which will be held in Qatar this winter, while the fifth-place team heads to an intercontinental playoff. They missed out in 2018, coming in sixth in qualifying, and again in 2022, managing only seventh place. And yet this undeniably talented squad has now failed to qualify for two successive World Cups. It was Chile that knocked Spain, the reigning champions at the time, out of the 2014 World Cup Chile that won back-to-back Copa AmГ©ricas, twice defeating Lionel MessiвЂ™s Argentina on penalty kicks. The current national team boasts some of the countryвЂ™s greatest ever players, a golden generation, with stars like Alexis SГЎnchez, Arturo Vidal, and others, whoвЂ™ve played for the biggest clubs in Europe and won important trophies there. If you have any doubts about this, look no further than Chile. Of all the soccer questions of this variety, the one that IвЂ™m most invested in (perhaps because it helps explain why Peru, the country where I was born, has struggled so much) is this: From which region is it most difficult to qualify for the World Cup? I understand that there are strong feelings on the matter-which IвЂ™m happy to discuss at length over a drink-but, unless youвЂ™re calling my father and everyone in my family a liar, the only correct answer is South America.

Questions like these donвЂ™t succumb to data or statistics but must be teased out, workshopped, read aloud like poetry. The more subjective the debate, the better: which player was the greatest across different eras, which historical team would win in a head-to-head, which league is the strongest, which country has the most aesthetically pleasing style of play. Soccer fans, like most sports fans, are always up for a good argument, especially the kind that canвЂ™t really be resolved.

Bobble head soccer