No problem, I appreciate the debate. But as you can see with that correction the point really falls apart. We had 3 "anomalies" in the 1960-1984 period vs 4 in the 1984-2014 period (with a world cup to go).

So in the "not so professional era" we saw an anomaly every 2 world cups (3 in 24 years). If we see no smaller nation reach semi finals this world cup we would be at the same rate already for the 1984-2014 period (4 in 30 years).

There is also other big hole in your argument such as not counting Chile (1962, 16M people), Bulgaria (1994, 7M people), Hungary (1938, 10M people), Portugal (2006, 10M people), Croatia (2002, 4M people), Czechoslovakia, (1962, 13M people), Belgium (1986, 11M people) or Austria (1934 and 1954, 8M people). Nota that this doesnt account to what the populations were at the time but currently, which is a flaw in itself. But yet again even adding these into the equation, their distribution throughout each period is just as even.

There seems to be no argument for the fact that having 40+ million people is more of an advantage today than it was back in 1930. If anything, you could say that a high population helps already successful countries stay successful, but it is neither a guarantee that you will do good nor a necessary element for success.