A few years down the line, that blueprint may now require some revision, because in South America they are churning out forwards that no one else in the world can live with.
First there was Lionel Messi, then Luis Suarez, and now there is Sergio Aguero.
Manchester City's star man has been world class for a while now, of course - he scored 23 goals in his first Premier League season and netted 17 times in 23 games during an injury-hit campaign last year.
But in the last few months he has risen to another level. Like Messi, Suarez and Alexis Sanchez of Chile, Aguero's appetite for the game is insatiable. He is a whirlwind and never stops.
These players are winning more and more matches almost on their own. Suarez nearly led Liverpool out of the wilderness to the Premier League title last season. Aguero, make no mistake, benefits from an outstanding supporting cast but he has now scored six more goals than Aston Villa this season.
Bayern Munich, even with 10 men, were indisputably the more accomplished team in their recent Champions League meeting with City but lost 3-2 on individual errors that were brilliantly punished by Aguero.
On Wednesday, against Sunderland, City were excellent as a group and their opposition truly dire but it was the Argentine, again, who turned their good work into something tangible.
Sebastian Coates was made to look a fool by a nutmeg on the edge of the box before Costel Pantilimon was beaten by one of those shots that on slow-motion replays looks saveable, but in reality it flew in before he could even start thinking about reacting.
That is a strong feature of Aguero's game, as it is for Suarez; they have this knack of dangling the ball like a carrot in front of their opponents for a fraction of a second, before snatching it away.
"Look across Europe and where are the strikers from? Many of them, at least 80 per cent, are from South America," Arsene Wenger opined recently when asked about Alexis, his own South American star. "Maybe it's because in Europe street football has gone. In street football, when you're 10 years old, you want to play with 15-year-olds.
"Then you have to prove you're good, you have to fight and win impossible balls. When it's all a bit more formalised, it's less about developing your individual skill and fighting attitude. We've lost that a bit."
Aguero is not known for his aggression, but his powers of improvisation are outstanding. He flicked Yaya Toure's pass into the path of Stevan Jovetic, who gave City the lead at the Stadium of Light, before adding a fourth later on by sweeping home James Milner's ball with another one-touch manoeuvre.
The 26-year-old could hardly be more popular in the blue half of Manchester and there may be a growing fear haunting the back of supporters' minds given our last two PFA Player of the Year winners in this country have left for Spain.
Aguero, for his part, has declared that City will be the last club he plays for in Europe before returning to Argentina to end his career, but that will not stop Barcelona - the destination at one point or another for Messi, Suarez and Alexis - not to mention Neymar - from coming sniffing.
Real Madrid, too, would surely be interested in a goalscorer of such unstoppable force given their use of a more traditional centre-forward. Every performance like this will further convince them he is worth the sort of money that will be required for City to even contemplate a sale.
For now, Aguero will help keep City in this title race and continue to demonstrate just how mystifying his exclusion from this year's 23-man Ballon d'Or shortlist was.
Next year, you sense, his name will be listed alongside Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and the rest, where it belongs.
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