World Football: The 10 Hardest Competitions to Win in the Game (2024)

There are certain competitions that footballers just want to win more than others, ones in which they are able to play against others who have mastered the game and truly test themselves.

Some silverware is simply more valuable than others. And that is because the trophies mean more when the tournament is more difficult to win.

Whether the competition is between international teams or club squads, players get most exhilarated when the stakes are highest and the rewards are greatest.

Here are 10 of the hardest and most rewarding competitions to win in all of football.

The Copa America determines the best footballing nation in South America, and is therefore incredibly difficult to win.

Two of the best nations in the sport, Brazil and Argentina, head the list of competing countries, with the Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Chileans providing extremely stiff competition for the title.

Winning the trophy is one of the greatest honors that a South American footballer can receive, as he must compete against some of the best teams in the world, playing some of the most beautiful, flowing football that can be seen anywhere the game is played.

To see the difficulty of this league, one must only look at the teams that one would have to overcome to win the title.

A very technically proficient league, rising teams like Valencia, Malaga and Levante are showing their quality this season in the scrap for a Champions League place.

Oh, and then there is Barcelona and Real Madrid, two of the most successful teams in the history of football.

Italy's Serie A may not be the juggernaut it was 20 years ago, but it is still an extremely competitive and exhilarating league with some of the best players in the world at every position.

AC Milan and Juventus are two teams with super-powered attacks and typically sturdy Italian defences that have the ability to compete at Europe's highest level.

There is depth in the league as well. While the two aforementioned giants have a considerable points advantage over their rivals, six teams are withing eight points of each other between third and eighth place.

In Italy there is both great quality and a certain measure of parity to add competitive balance.

Speaking of competitive balance, there is no better place to find it than Germany's Bundesliga.

There, the "50 plus one rule"keeps every team owned by its supporters, and therefore, unlike in other leagues, big-money billionaires are kept out.

That results in unequaled parity and allows almost every club a fair financial playing field, even though some clubs, like Bayern Munich, seem to annually be one of the best teams in the country.

Because anything can happen in the Bundesliga in any given season—few would have predicted at the start of the season, for example, that Borussia Monchengladbach would be contending for a Champions League place—it is one of the toughest competitions to win in world football.

And here we come to the only cup competition on this list. But, due to the wide range of teams that compete in it and its illustrious history, the FA Cup should be considered one of the hardest competitions to win in all the world.

Teams from almost every level of English football are allowed to participate, and bigger clubs are forced to navigate past potentially tricky lower league sides to progress, and are often forced to field something close to their strongest side to progress.

The historic trophy carries such significance that every team will devote much of its resources to winning it, and the latter stages of the competitionperenniallydeliver great spectacle.

African football has blossomed to produce some of the greatest players on the planet today, and seeing them plying their trade for their respective national teams in one competition is quite a thrill.

It also makes the African Cup of Nations very difficult to win. Ivory Coast were the presumptive winners of this year's competition until they met an emotional and determined Zambia side in the final who walked away with their first ever trophy on penalties.

Even qualifying for the competition is a difficult task. Cameroon are usually assumed participants in the ACN, but were unable to take part in this year's iteration of the tournament aftersub-parperformances in the preliminary rounds.

Indisputably Europe's greatest competition between national teams, the Euros always provide fantastic entertainment and riveting twists from qualifying until the conclusion of the tournament.

Many of the top players in Europe's best leagues compete against each other in one prestigious competition to decide who reigns supreme on arguably the best footballing continent in the world.

Smaller countries always seem to play above their ability, whether in the man event or in the equally riveting qualifying stages, making every match just as exciting as the next.

Simply navigatingthroughthe preliminary rounds is a difficult task for any country, but progressing through each round of the actual competition is so difficult that it usually requires some luck.

That is international football at its finest.

Despite suggestions that La Liga is having a renaissance of sorts and had overtaken England's Premier League in quality, I still maintain that football's creators still have the best league in the world.

From top to bottom, each and every team can beat any other on any given day, and there are never two-horse races for the title. Even without the strict spending of the Bundesliga, upsets are quite commonplace, as QPR's surprising 2-1 victory over a resurgent Arsenal side showed.

For a team to win the Premier League, its players must cope with the demands of an extremely long season with no winter break and extremely physical games every week. Therefore, having an element of luck in the injury department is crucial.

In terms of domestic leagues, it really doesn't get any better than what England has to offer, especially with the stunning quality of the top teams.

The UEFA Champions League isindisputablythe most highly esteemed and most prestigious club competition in the world.

Any team that hopes to win it will have to go through many of the best sides that Europe has to offer, which are, by extension, the best in the world.

The quality of play and the intensity with which players approach this prized competition is riveting because each man on the pitch knows that to win, or even progress, in a competition stacked with the best that football has to offer, they must give everything their body will allow.

Some even value the famous big-eared trophy more than the World Cup, demonstrating just how elated players feel if they are fortunate enough to reach the summit of club football.

There really can be no more difficult competition to win than one played only once every four years, and which features all of the very best players form around the world assembled into one 32-team field.

The World Cup is a stunning spectacle that enraptures billions of people every time football's greatest and most prestigious show kicks off. Passion and pressure are at their highest, and the players face an immensely difficult task to keep clear heads in the heat of the biggest battles of their careers.

When such a confluence of talent, pressure and desire occurs, a special and rare sporting event takes place, and that is exactly how one may describe the World Cup—the greatest exhibition of what the sport has to offer, all in one country for one month.

When players climb that ultimate mountain and achieve immortality for their team and for their country, it defines their careers, because they have achieved the most difficult feat in all of football.