Belgium have only been ‘heavyweights’ for less than a decade. Portugal will be favourites for their game against Morocco, provided Switzerland don’t stage a miraculous comeback as I type. Netherlands, France, us, Croatia and probably Portugal will still be in it.
South America has always had Argentina and Brazil as heavyweights and they have had a poor 20 years in the world cup. What we’re seeing is a resurgence of them more than anything. Europe still has the most quarter finalists.
These things ebb and flow. Just look at previous world cups. 2002 – France, Portugal out at the group stage, Netherlands didn’t qualify. 2010 – France, Italy out the group stage, England barely scraped through in a poor group. 2014 – England, Spain out of the group stage. 2018 – Italy don’t qualify, Netherlands don’t qualify, Germany out of the group stage.
It’s not much different than normal, except both Brazil and Argentina look like they could make the semi-finals reducing the usual 3+ European teams to probably 2. All 4 semi-finalists could still be European.
