FIFA World Rankings August 2006

A joke as usual. Germany in 9th, Guinea in 22nd?? There’s no way Moldova and Burkina Faso are above Jamaica, Saudi Arabia or South Africa either. At least the top 10’s relatively ok except for Germany.

Bob, both teams Guinea and USA belong to minor confederations. I say this respectfully and based only on statistics.
The only important team USA ever faces is Mexico, and is not even a top 10.
CONCACAF is stealing seats from WC. It’s my opinion.
Guinea, beat Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana, Kenya, Tunisia (which ranks #30) and Morocco (which ranks 39). Not much either, but Africa has much better teams than North America.
USA soccer shouldn’t even be top 30.
Here’s proof
The 6 best teams of 3 confederations and how they rank in the world.
(I left european teams out of this, so that it’s not too obvious)

CONCACAF
Mexico 16
USA 23
C. Rica 47
Guatem. 50
T Tobago 61
Jamaica 74

Africa
Nigeria 11
Cameroon 12
Ivory C 18
Ghana 25
Tunisia 30
Senegal 35

South America
Brasil 1
Argentina 3
Uruguay 14
Paraguay 19
Ecuador 27
Colombia 29

As you can see, some teams have to work a lot harder to get to go to WC.

Albo,

So you use the rankings (which most agree are arbitrary at best) to validate the rankings?

Not that you are wrong, but that’s not much of an argument.

Brian

bfos7215, I was trying to explain that it’s all about who do you play to get to a WC and how do you do once you get there. Most of your ranking points come out of all those games.

Forgot to mention and maybe you know this but FIFA world rankings have been totally reviewed and redefined in December of 2005.

http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/rank/procedures/0,2540,3,00.html

What makes you think these rankings are “arbitrary at best” ?

Maybe I should have said “seemingly arbitrary”. Even if the rankings are calculated by a formula, the results of those formulas have not represented the true rank of the teams.

[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave aReply [...]

if italy isnt number one there is no credibility.

1234 stars…blinded by the stars. sunglasses

You’re wrong. John.
Italians who know how the rankings work have no problems at all with FIFA about it.
You just didn’t take the time to read it.

Bob nice to see you back blogging. Did you need a rest from all that German Bier? FIFA ratings as usual are a joke. Italy is the world cup champ and should be #1. France #2, Germany #3, Portugal #4 and so on. I’m not an Italien fan, my team is Germany. These FIFA rankings are a total joke. As for the US, they probably are ranked too high. The US needs to be able to beat or tie some of the top teams and beating Honduras or these CONCAF teams just doesn’t cut it.

gotta say the rankings are notoriously inaccurate, and the new system will not change that – why? look at the motivations for the new system:
(from the FAQ link on the ratings page)

WHY DID IT NEED TO BE REVISED?
“The world ranking gives too little weighting to recent results”
“The world ranking is too complicated”
“The world ranking is difficult to understand”

ie. only 1 of the 3 reasons is to do with the accuracy of the system – the other two are because of morons who can’t follow a complicated system. And even worse the reason “The world rankings do match the estimations of experts” (ie. they are wrong) was not one of their motivations – yes I know experts are subjective, but get enough of them together from a suitably net-unbiased set of backgrounds and you have a much better assesment which the formula should be trying to match.

for an alternative version:
http://www.eloratings.net/
(from memory this is based on the chess system of ratings)
on that system Guinea is 50th, USA is 27th, Mexico is 16th, Italy is 1st, but unusual placements include: Denmark at 10th, Romania 15th, Ireland 17th, Honduras 37th.

So I think you get whacky results either way, but which do you trust more, a bunch organised by FIFA or a method created by chess players?

Brazil has been overrated for too long. Lets stop this crap. They are good but not the best. If a bunch of “French” guys can kick it out of the most important tournament, they are not, I repeat, they cannot be the best.

Therefore the Fifa rankings continue to be crap. Except I like the fact that Americans are beginning to be aware they are not amongst the top 5 soccer countries in the world. And Mexico. What the hell was that about getting them seeded in the groups.

Real Ranking should be like this

1 – Italy (Not counting the last friendly that saw a completely different Italy)
2 – Argentina (This might come as a surprise but getting kicked out by Germany in Germany means little).
3 – France (I would like to place them lower but there is no one else I can place above France)
4 – Brazil
5 – Spain
6 – Germany
7 – Portugal (They played well but cannot be placed above Spain sorry portuguese supporters)
8 – England (Another overrated team)
9 – Holland
10 – Czech Republic

I agree Massimo. The Brazil thing is way overdone. The marketing blitz around them hides the fact that Joca Bonita (correct spelling?) is in the ICU. It’s too bad. The last true great Brazilian team was in 1982. ‘94 was solid but nothing like the ‘82 – to me anyway. Since then they have been on par with everyone else (notably Germany, Argentina Italy and France) despite their impressive three straight finals apperances – where some luck played a role. But that’s ok. Point is that to the casual fan who doesn’t follow soccer Brazil is the be alland end all of soccer. Which it isn’t. Argentina is the leader in South America.

By the way guys check out the ELO rankings. They seem to make more sense. FIFA needs a new formula.

Im pretty much always right albo…..ivy league education and all.

formula smorula…..it’s very simple. If you win the world cup you are ranked 1….get it 1 not 2 or 3.

therefore Italy is 1 ….is this so simple that it’s complicated ?

please advise if further clarification is required.

I agree John, you win the world cup and you should be automatically ranked No 1.

The formulas can apply to position 2 and down.

wow! a 192nd place finish for my country. hahaha. at least we’re not in last place as i would have guessed.

NIGERIA AS OF TODAY IS ONE OF THE BEST COUNTRY IN FOOTBAL AFTER BRASIL DUE THEY DID NOT GO TO WORLD CUP BECAUSE OF SELIFISH RULE IMBIB BY THE ORGANISING BODY THAT NIGER GIVE WAY TO ANGOLA.PLZ PLACE NIGER THE RIGTH POSITION.THANKS.
MAYOR TONY.

I do not understand why guinea is still ahead of ghana

I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE RANKINGS IN SEPTEMBER.WHY CANT THE WEAKER TEAMS HAVE A CHANCE TO PLAY TOP TEAMS eg DJIBOUTI VRS BRAZIL. I THINK THIS WILLEITHER CATAPULT THEM TO BETTER POSITIONS OR THRUST THEM INTO UTTER OBLIVION.

GHANA BLACK STARS IS CURRENTLY THE BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD, I TELL YOU!!!!!!!!

I can very well understand Italy’s and Germany’s climb, France’s #4 and the Czech’s fall. What I cannot understand is England’s, Spain’s and The Netherlands’s positions…

Portugal went semi finalist in WC06, all these three stayed behind.

Portugal was finalist in EC04 and beat exactly these teams on the way there.

Portugal went home in WC02 after groups, Spain and England went quarter finalist (the SINGLE time they went further than POR, in the past 6 years), The Netherlands weren’t even there.

In EC00, POR went semi, as well as The Netherlands, but NOT the others… Portugal has beaten The Netherlands, consecutivelly, in oficial matches since then. But Portugal, together with The Netherlands, also made the best european qualification campaign fpr WC06.

So, NO, I honestly cannot understand the ranking of these 4, top 10, european teams…

FIFA rankings are a joke. Always were. But before everyone rags on the state of US soccer too much, remember they have beaten some quality teams recently. They hold a 7-1-2 record against Mexico since 2000, won their (weak) qualifying region in Concacaf and have beaten some fairly respectable teams like Poland and Columbia in the past year or so. Any judgement that a team in a weak confederation like Concacaf or Africa (or Asia for that matter) should be ranked above any other team is purely subjective.

On another subject, I’d like to see the World Cup expanded from it’s current format of 32 teams to 40. I know the club teams would hate having to release players for en even longer time, but I think it would lead to a more interesting group round in the WC.

You could have 8 groups of 5 teams each in round 1. Making the probability of a goal difference tie breaker more remote. Then in round 2, either the top 2 teams would qualify from each group – or have the top 3 teams qualify with the top team in each group having a bye, with the 2nd and 3rd teams having to play an extra game for the right to play a group winner.

I think this would make things interesting and give teams incentive to play out the whole round. It would also make some more slots available for some deserving European teams.

1.brazil (the best team in the world even if they did’nt perform in the world cup)
2.italy
3.argentina
4.france
5.spain
6.england
7. The Netherlands
8.spain
9.Portugal
10.germany
11.Czech Republic
12.Mexico
13.Nigeria
14.Cameroon

THE MAIN REASON BEHIND THE DEFEAT IN WORLD CUP FOR BRAZIL THAT THEY HAVE MANY STARS PLAYING IN THE GAME THEY HAVE ALL TOP CLASS STRIKERS LIKE RONALDO,RONALDINHO,ADRIANO,KAKA,ROBINHI,LUCIO,EMERSON DUE TO WHICH THEY DID,NT WIN NOW THEY HAVE TO DECIDE THAT WHO WILL BE THEIR MAIN STRIKER AND WHO WILL BE THEIR MIDFIELDER

Brazilian player Ronaldois N.o1 player in world ranking i love Ronaldo.