Asia will beat Africa to a first Fifa World Cup win, says former England goalkeeper David James

Asia has overtaken Africa and now looks the more likely continent to produce a World Cup-winning team, according to the former England goalkeeper David James.

Speaking at the World Football Forum in Changsha, James said Asia’s financial clout and passion would propel it to the forefront of the game in the coming decades.

“I genuinely think that an Asian country has got a better chance of winning the World Cup than an African one,” the former Liverpool goalkeeper said.

“When I was growing up in the Nineties, it was all about how Africa was going to be the next continent to win the World Cup. I can’t see it.”

James, who is due in Hong Kong later this week for the annual Citi HKFC Soccer Sevens, was referring to Brazilian legend Pele’s famous prediction that an African team would win the World Cup before 2000, which turned out to be wide of the mark.

No African team has made it past the quarter-finals, and although Asian sides flopped at the last World Cup in 2014, with none reaching the knock-out rounds, South Korea reached the semis on home soil in 2002.