I follow ski jumping since the days of Weissflog, Ernst Vettori & Andreas Felder. The only team that is really gone is Finland. Everyone else has a better or worse crop of jumpers but they never drop below a certain level.
Nobody would put a penny on Toni Nieminen before 1992 either. That's the nature of this sport. It's easy to explode with form and then completely vanish within a few months. Just look where Peter Prevc is now compared to 2016. Kobayashi gets a bad press because Japan was supposed to be a field-filler like in the last decade, he doesn't speak English too and the sport has become European-centric again.
The level has actually gone up to the point some hills struggle with the starting gates, some hills are already at Level 1 and can't be modified anymore. That's one thing nobody ever talks about. 130 meters from Gate 15 in 1998 is nothing like 130m from Gate 1 in 2019