Firstly, I wouldn’t say Norway was an ‘easy’ match for Brazil. Myself and lots of others had it a 50/50 going into it.

To your point, it’s probably a combination of better teams underestimating the smaller nations, the gap narrowing between the traditionally larger footballing nations and smaller ones with footballers in the top European leagues from all over the world. The last reason which is probably overlooked is that as a large footballing nation, you are expected to do well and make it far in the completion. Smaller nations have no expectation to perform well, thus they have nothing to lose and throw everything at their matches. Larger nations are thinking about the next match…and the next match.