Dying for Italian Press Reports

Meanwhile we are down (???) to 29th.

Oh, we lost the 3-0 Poland game from the rankings. The Italy game bumped us up to 27th for a month.

These rankings mean nothing. Italy dropped to 11th early in 2006 and I remember Fabio Cannavaro was complaining about it and then they turned around and won the WC a few months later. At the same time the Czech Republic was ranked #2 for quite a while and they crashed at the WC and never won anything so I really don't see how these rankings mean all that much. .

Again, FIFA rankings are used for World Cup Seeding purposes.

Is that something new? I always thought they went by WC records for the top seeds....

Here is the step-by-step FIFA seeding procedure:

1. Seed the hosts.
2. Figure out which other teams you want to seed.
3. Come up with a formula that seeds those other teams you want to seed.
4. Pretend the formula resulted in the seeding, rather than the other way around.

Truer words were never spoken.

Until 2 December 2009, one could rationally believe that FIFA intended the seeding formula to be an objective assessment of the top seven teams in the world (not counting the hosts in World Cups with strong host teams). 1998 World Cup: FIFA uses a new formula. 2002 World Cup: FIFA uses the same formula. 2006 World Cup: FIFA tweaks the formula slightly, but gets the same seeds they would have if they'd used the old formula.

2010 World Cup: FIFA radically changes the formula and bizarrely uses a version of their rankings that is one month out of date. The scales fell from our eyes.

I am aware of the history, but the problem is they never tell what is up until after the fact. Had those old formulas produced a "weird" seed, I doubt they would have been used.

In any case, the point being that if people honestly think that if we should simply aim for a high enough FIFA ranking that we'll earn ourselves a World Cup seed, they are sorely mistaken. At this point it's pretty clear that FIFA seeds the 7 non-host teams that they please.

Alas, yes. There is some use to having a FIFA ranking that's among the top three in CONCACAF, but that's about all a high FIFA ranking does for the USA.

To get a World Cup seed, the USA more or less has to make at least the quarterfinals in back-to-back World Cups, probably including at least one trip to the semifinals. It's possible for lots of the traditional powers to miss out and leave a seed for the USA by default, but not particularly likely.

Sadly, the only Italian Press Reports these days is all about Piermario Morosini....


http://sports.yahoo.com/news/italian-players-death-sparks-probes-145336176--spt.html


http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Corradi scores lost friend/6464405/story.html#ixzz1sEMJEVln