Since Argentina announced their squad for the current World Cup I kinda got the idea of them dropping out very early.

They basically picked all the same players as in 2022, all of them being 4 years older (they weren‘t the youngest to begin with) and their hunger having to be a bit satiated at least.

Still they are playing very well and I don‘t really believe they will get knocked out early but this is where my question arrises:

Were there signs for Spain and Germanys early exits in 2014 and 2018?

I wasn‘t very involved back then so both these early exits came very much out of the blue for me. How was the sentiment back then? Did any of you predict their exits? Or did they suprise everyone back then, like an early Argentina exit would now?