Noam Chomsky on the role of sports in propaganda-based authority

[RZM]

63. Plenty of other states play close attention to their teams as well

Argentina won during the dictatorship in 1978 but it also won it in 1986, several years after the first post-dictatorship free elections.

Other teams that won during the postwar era include:

Brazil (5 times, only one of which was during the military dictatorship)
West Germany (3 times)
Italy (2 times)
England (1 time)
France (1 time)
Spain (1 time)

So it would seem like authoritarian regimes fare a lot worse than Democracies. In any given year quite a few participants in the tournament are not Democracies. Yet they almost never win. In fact, if you look at who finished second, third, and fourth, you see that the Democracies are well-represented there as well.

I'm not saying that authoritarian states place a lot of stock in sports because they do. But so does everybody else.