Why does this World Cup seem Weak?

According to FIFA Rankings the 2014 World Cup should be the toughest World Cup since the tournament in expanding to 32 teams in 1998. If the rankings say it's the strongest its been in 5 go arounds, why does it feel like a very weak tournament?

First things first FIFA Rankings are a mess, they always have been and they will be until they figure out a way to weigh results differently. Don't believe me, I'll give you an example from the past four World Cups

Year	Host	Over ranked	Under ranked	Why?	What happened?
1998	France	USA #12 Japan #14	France 18th	The host team doesn’t need to qualify, so they don’t play the amount of meaningful point earning matches.	France won the WC, Japan and US finished 31st and 32nd respectively (though not all that respectively if you know what I mean
2002	South Korea/Japan	France #1 Argentina #3 Portugal #5	Turkey #22 South Korea #40	France were coming off a Confederation Cup in in 2001 and a World Cup win in 1998. Portugal was coming off an undefeated run in qualifying. And Argentina had won COMNEBOL, beating one of the worst Brazilian teams of the past 20 years.	Turkey and South Korea played for 3rd place, France, Argentina and Portugal failed to advance
2006	Germany	#2 Czech Republic USA #5	#48 Ghana	No fricken clue	A group of USA, Italy, Ghana and Czehc Republic saw the two lower ranked teams advance.
2010	South Africa	The ones that lost	The ones that won.	Three teams entered South Africa with FIFA rankings lower than 75. The firs time ever.	5 of 16 teams in the knockout were ranked 30 or lower.  And of course Spain, the heavy favorites actually won.

So FIFA rankings are goofed up in the first place, but the rankings for the 2014 World Cup show that the highest ranked teams that will be missing out are Ukraine at 17, Scotland at 22 and Denmark at 23. In 2002, three teams in the Top 10 all missed out (Columbia, Netherlands and Yugoslavia).

This is the first year the Top 15 in the final rankings before the tournament begins have all made the World Cup. In fact it's the first year since expansion to 32 teams that the entire Top 10 will be competing. But it still feels like a very weak set of 32 teams. Why is that?

I have three theories, the pumping up/pimping of the South American teams (partially due to playing at home and also due to not having to qualify against Brazil). In past years all the teams in CONMEBOL had to play Brazil twice in qualifying, this year that didn’t happen, over the past two cycles Brazil had lost 4 of 36 qualifiers. Not to mention with 4.5 of the 9 teams qualifying, all you had to do was go .500 to make it to the World Cup.  In Europe going .500 gets you third or fourth place. I’m not buying Colombia especially with their best player Radamel Falcao, out. Though their defense was strong, CONMBEOL was the 2^nd lowest scoring confederation in qualifying this cycle. And if I’m not a believer in Colombia, than it becomes even harder to believe in Chile or Ecuador. Six of Chile’s 9 wins were against the 4 teams that didn’t advance, While Ecuador didn’t win a game outside of Quito the entire qualification process.  

It could also be age. In 2010, there were 180 players over 30. This year there are also 180 players over 30. Though the numbers say otherwise, it seems like more teams are going to be relying on 30+ year olds, rather than using them as experienced veterans. Players aged 26-29 are typically at their best, many of them are playing in their second World Cup, while players under 26 are likely in their first. In 2010 players ages 26-29 scores 68 goals, players 25 or under scored 51 and players over 30 scored 33 (9 of them coming from Miroslav Klose and Diego Forlan). That next group of 26-29 year old (with the exceptions of Messi, Ronaldo and Rooney) have yet to arrive and many teams will be relying on players outside that golden range. Of course players don’t just hit 30 and stop being able to produce, but when you are looking to a 33 year old Samuel Eto’o or 34 year old Tim Cahill as your main source of goals it doesn’t make for much excitement. England might start Lampard and Gerrard next to eachother, which could be ugly but for the fact that all the other midfielders in Group D are old as well. France will likely have Bacary Sagna and Patrice Evra on the wings but won’t have to face any great wingers that will execute against them in the Group Stage. There may be a lot of young talent under 23 talent this year, 

The third reason, is the draw just didn't produce intriguing matchups. Many of these games don’t get me excited and in turn it leads me to believe the field is weak. Due to the asinine process of seeding and pots, Switzerland and Colombia earned seeds which meant teams like England, Netherlands, France and Portugal were left in the Europe pot. I’ve still yet to figure out how Colombia, a team that didn’t qualify for the past three World Cups had enough points to get seeded. But Switzerland’s road to Pot A is pretty ridiculous as well. Having to beat the likes of Iceland, Slovenia, Norway, Albania and Cyprus, quite possibly the easiest group in the entire qualifying process throughout the world, to advance (Belgium is for real, by the way totally deserving of their seed). With two teams (and the possibility of a Luis Suarez-less Uruguay side making three, though you can't predict injuries in the draw) that I consider to be very mediocre winning seeds, it simply makes a couple groups extremely dull. Take out Columbia and Switzerland from Pot A and toss in Italy and Netherlands (the next two teams).  The draw might have led to a few more exciting games. Personally there isn’t a game in Group C that remotely interests me. But I’d be glued to the TV for an Ivory Coast/Italy match. In 2010, I watched almost every game. I wanted to cheer for underdogs like New Zealand, I loved seeing North Korea give Brazil everything they could handle. This year the stories aren’t there, it doesn’t feel like there is drama outside of being an American cheering for the US, in a spot where nobody gives them a chance.

This World Cup has 5 or 6 very good teams, 20 mediocre teams and 6-7 teams that are just happy to be there.  When you pair all three of the above theories together it comes down to a lot of ok teams playing against eachother. When average teams from South America or Europe beat other average teams from South America or Europe they get better points than when pretty good African teams beat average African teams, and the FIFA Rankings kind of screw that up. The fact that the 26-29 year old age range, doesn’t seem to really be on display this go around, leads me to believe we’ve got a bunch of teams with old guys and young guys which leads to tactical soccer that might not be all that eye catching. And the simple fact that Switzerland and Columbia were seeded go to show that many other teams didn’t take advantage of opportunities and found themselves in situations they may not have expected. In March Madness parity is awesome, because there are 48 games in 4 days, if two teams are shooting 17% at halftime and the score is 15-11 you can watch another game. The World Cup doesn’t work like that, you commit 2 hours to each game. There are great 0-0 games but there are some really dull 3-1 games as well. Two average soccer teams playing each other, might produce drama but it isn’t always dramatic and often times can be very unexciting.

But it’s the World Cup, so ignore everything I just said and enjoy!