Top 5 teams who didn't win the big prize

Leafing through Jonathan Wilson's engrossing history of football tactics, 'Inverting the Pyramid', it is clear to me there is neither a perfect or ideal way to play soccer, nor any consensus on what constitutes the 'best' team in most tournaments.

It is hard to deny league champions are anything but tops over a season, but when it comes to knock-out, we are forever debating who should have won, because we mix aesthetics up with effectiveness in choosing our favorite sides. With this in mind, I jotted down my 'Best of the Rest' - nations which did not win soccer's premier prize - the World Cup, when they could and maybe should have:

1. Netherlands 1974 – No country ever took the finals by storm as much as the free-thinking tulips did in ‘74. Having stormed into the lead in the final before West Germany had even touched the ball, the Dutch masters then cut off their own ear by trying to paint a masterpiece instead of settling for a functional canvas. Total Football’s defeat at the finish remains about the most heroic failure in soccer history.
2. Hungary 1954 – The Mighty Magyars had won the 1952 Olympic Football crown and demolished England 6-3 at Wembley and Italy 3-0 in Rome a year later, so entered the World Cup hot favorites. They started with a 9-0 blitzing of South Korea yet in the final Germany pulled off the first of its confounding comebacks to win 3-2 and steal a little country's great chance of glory.
3. Brazil 1950 – The seleçao had smashed Spain 6-1 and Sweden 7-1 in the final round before they choked in front of 200,000 Maracana fans in the final. Brazil succumbed to two late Uruguayan goals to fall 2-1 and send a nation into despair, and a few locals into taking their own lives.
4. Brazil 1982 - This absurdly good team lost in the second group stage in an unforgettable 3-2 tussle with eventual-winners Italy, the game of the tournament, but they remain as skilful and colorful an eleven as the World Cup has seen. The names trip off the tongue – Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Eder, Cerezo and Junior. Despite a dodgy keeper (Peres) and a ponderous center-forward (Serginho), they served up some real magic in their five games.
5. Brazil 1938 – The seleçao would have bagged their first World Cup 20 years early had coach Ademar Pimenta not rested top gun Leonidas for the semi-final. The man who popularized the bicycle kick had netted six in three games beforehand and still won the Golden Shoe, but his coach’s hubristic gamble let Italy win 2-1 and the Brazilians sailed home in shock.

On the bench:

1. Austria 1934 – The dominant soccer nation of the early 1930s found rain and fascism in their path. Hugo Meisl’s ‘Wunderteam’ fell 1-0 to hosts Italy in the semi-final but the referee had been ‘entertained’ by Benito Mussolini and gave the home team an easy ride, including on the winning goal (scored by an Argentinian), when the goalkeeper was fouled. A heavy downpour before kick-off had also hampered the slick-passing Austrians, on whom the sun did not shine that day in Milan.
2. Romania 1994 – The most skilful team in the US lost out on penalties to Sweden in the quarter-finals, but graced the competition with the ‘Maradona of the Carpathians’, Gheorghe Hagi and crucifix-wielding coach Anghel Iordanescu at times mesmerizing.
3. Portugal 1966 – England probably deserved to win the final, but were outplayed in the semis by a rampant Portugal boasting the outstanding Madagascan Eusebio. England went two goals up thanks to Bobby Charlton’s shooting prowess, before it faced its heaviest onslaught since World War Two, clinging on desperately to progress 2-1.
4. Brazil 1998 – Ronaldo’s convulsions on the day of the final spooked a fine team, who had looked awesome before edging past an excellent Dutch eleven on penalties in the last four. The alleged pressure from Nike to play their sick poster boy meant the final was never the mouth-watering contest it should have been, and France cantered to a 3-0 win.
5. Denmark 1986 – Prematurely forgotten, the dazzling Danes thrashed Uruguay 6-1, then brushed aside eventual finalists West Germany before astonishingly caving in 5-1 to Spain in the second round. A team which burnt very brightly before burning out quite suddenly.
6. Argentina 1994 – If it had not been for the ephedrine in Diego’s blood, a confident and free-flowing Argentina might have been crowned champions in Pasadena instead of Brazil. Having started with a canter, the Albicelestes' camp was convulsed by the Maradona drug circus and they duly lost 3-2 to Romania in the second round. But it could all have been so different.

- Sean O'Conor