How the Final World Cup 16 were ranked by FIFA
It is always fun to look back at the things we talked about before the World Cup. We’ve already shown you that our predictions were awful, so to make ourselves feel better we figured we would take a look at how FIFA had the World Cup teams ranked heading into the competition. Of the 16 remaining teams, 10 were actually ranked among the top 16 in the world. Ghana, Australia and Ukraine were all well down on the list, giving hope to lower ranked teams for years to come, while the Czech Republic and USA earn the dubious distinction of being most highly overrated.
Based on the final rankings before the World Cup:
Round of 16 teams
1 Brazil
3 Netherlands
4 Mexico
5 Spain
7 Portugal
8 France
9 Argentina
10 England
13 Italy
16 Sweden
19 Germany
35 Switzerland
39 Ecuador
42 Australia
45 Ukraine
48 Ghana
Eliminated teams
2 Czech Republic
5 USA
18 Japan
21 Tunisia
23 Iran
23 Croatia
26 Costa Rica
29 Poland
29 Korea Republic
32 Côte d’Ivoire
33 Paraguay
34 Saudi Arabia
44 Serbia and Montenegro
47 Trinidad and Tobago
57 Angola
61 Togo
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Comments
By Rebecca | June 24th, 2006 at 4:39 am 
Well it looks like some of the teams in the top 16 didn’t even make it to the World Cup finals, so the rankings definitely need some work.
Posted from 
United States
By enzo | June 24th, 2006 at 5:21 am How the USA can be rated 5 and Czech Republic 2 is beyond me, but if that is FIFA’s rating then I would expect Australia’s rating to be well above that of the USA, otherwise the ratings cut no ice.
Posted from 
Australia
By yaju | June 24th, 2006 at 8:25 am haha…. if you don’t think this is funny enough, you wanna know the missing numbers?
11 Nigeria & Denmark
14 Turkey
15 Cameroon
17 Egypt
That’s right. FIFA thinks they play better football than Germany. FIFA is releasing new rankings based on their new system on July 12th. It’s going to be a big shock to many recreational ‘soccer’ fans in United States.
Posted from 
Canada
By Claude | June 24th, 2006 at 9:20 am How FIFA can rank Iran to be #23 while Germany is #19 is beyond me. Does anybody think that Iran could beat Germany anywhere in the world? The Czech Republic I am sure would have done a lot better if they hadn’t lost Jan Koller but these FIFA rankings are crazy. No way the US is #5 or even as high as #20. We’ll see on Saturday if Mexico deserves it’s #4 ranking vs. Argentina’s #9. I suspect not.
Posted from United States
By Prerna | June 24th, 2006 at 9:38 am I think they forgot to add “00″ to the US ranking.
LOL.
Fifa rankings are a bunch of BS.
By Andy | June 24th, 2006 at 1:10 pm Ditto that, Prerna. I am in charge of our office sweep and I heard from many ‘novice’ punters later that they had picked teams according to the FIFA rankings.
Of course, I laughed at their naivete, and am looking forward to some of the winnings…I hope!
Posted from 
Japan
By Kasam | June 24th, 2006 at 2:27 pm The way the rankings is gives certain games more value e.g. Qualification games, World cup games etc.
Germany ranked 19th - due to not making any points from qualifers - obviously being host nation.
CONCACAF e.g. Mexico and USA have over inflated rankings due to playing more qualifiers over 4 year cycle than all other confederations (I think). There are alternative rankings which may be more reflective of current teams. Try http://www.eloratings.net/world.html e.g. they have Aussies (17th), Mexico (16th), Swiss (13th) and most aptly USA (28th).
Posted from 
United Kingdom
By shuai | June 26th, 2006 at 10:33 am This rating seems to be performant.
Posted from 
France
By Eric Phillips | June 28th, 2006 at 2:57 am I’d like to point something out. In the comments section to that FIFA rankings post, a guy posting under the name Grigori named what he thought were the top 7 teams, based on discussion at some soccer website. Guess what? All 7 teams that he named are in the final 8 for this tournament. And he named them back on May 17.
Now that’s impressive.
Posted from United States
By Eric Phillips | June 28th, 2006 at 3:19 am Check out Grigori’s list of the top 7 teams in the comments section to that FIFA ranking post. All 7 teams he names are in the final 8 for this tournament, and he posted that back on May 17.
Now that’s impressive.
Posted from United States
By Drew | June 30th, 2006 at 3:38 am I am an ozzie living in china, and heard the chinese commentator bag the sutralian socceroos, is anyone else with me in thinking that the chinese commentator of cctv5 (state sports channel) Huang Zhen Cheng is an absolute fool? i think that cctv 5 should fire and punish him, it was completley unfair what he said about the australian football team; he said that he hates the australian football team and that theyu got what they deserved, and the coach reaped the seeds he sowed. well screw you Huang Zhen. after all we were representing Asia which i noticed china didn’t even qualify for the world cup!
Posted from 
China
By Drew | June 30th, 2006 at 3:44 am what’s with the unfair treatment of of Australia in regards to referees in the world cup. in the match between aus and itlay that penalty really wasn’t deserved. australia should be in the top 8 NOT ITALY. and then croatia and aus the referee gave a yellow card to a man in croatia
3 times, then sent him off, and missed an obvious foul against. and also in the japan match when one of the japenese players pushed the goal keeper down to prevent him from saving the goal. i am happy we beat you Japan
Posted from China
By barts | July 14th, 2006 at 3:27 pm First we found the olympic movement was a cash cow now its FiFA. The rankings are so pro US. Designed to give them an easy passage due to the revenue.
They made it clear the big names needed to be there late for tv ratings and sponsorship.
That penalty Italy australia ?????
The refs decided the finals.
Bring in th video for god sakes. Ive seen enough to think dont bother to watch again.
mark
Posted from Australia
By vinny | July 18th, 2006 at 1:53 pm i think italy should b higher than 13th i think they should b in da top 5 places as england should be in da top 10.
Posted from United Kingdom
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