USA Up to 27th In November 2012 FIFA Rankings

Hexagonal teams:

14. Mexico
27. USA
Tied 46. Panama
50. Jamaica
56. Honduras
64. Costa Rica

All of those countries except Panama improved their rank.

Like I said before I take the Fifa rankings with a grain of salt.

Incidentally, Russia moved up to #9.

... or two, on the rim of a glass that is filled with a margarita on the rocks....

At the end of the day, FIFA rankings aren't worth the cost of the webpage they're posted on.

what rankings?? They are a joke!

Nate Silver, who correctly called 49/49 states on their electoral college votes (called FL a toss up) made a ranking system for soccer. I feel like this is probably a bit more accurate.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/spi/rankings?cc=5901

There's no way that's Silver's ranking system.

http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2009/11/11/the-count-espns-new-soccer-rankings/

How Italy winds up at #21 on that list is a mystery.

FIFA rankings are pretty good inside each confederation.

Mexico is the best team in CONCACAF by a fair amount. USA is second by a fair amount. Caribbean qualifying has shot Haiti way up higher than they belong, but other than that, the four Hex teams are the next best. FIFA has Canada above CR, which I don't think is accurate.

If I had to rank CONCACAF, I'd go:
1. Mexico
2. USA
3. Panama
4. Honduras
5. Jamaica
6. Costa Rica

There is a lot more distance between 1 and 2, and 2 and 3, than anywhere else.

If Italy and Venezuela were to meet in the World Cup and the World Cup was next month, are you honestly going to tell me that you'd put your money on Venezuela?

Yes. While I do think there are some differences between the 4 of those teams and there will be some teams that will probably get hot and others that will sink for various reasons (coaching, injuries, etc), quality-wise I almost feel like you could put them all in a hat and draw them at random. I do think that this Hex will see a lot of teams taking a lot of points off one another.

Unfortunately, I also think it's pretty predictable that we might get upset. At our recent best there isn't much gap between 1 and 2, but at our recent worst we're no better than 3-6, and I'm only marginally confident that Klinsmann has gotten a handle on that. (I will say that both in tactics and in form, the away game at Kingston represents a certain "bottoming out" point that I hope won't be repeated.)

Maybe we should be number six instead of Mexico because we've actually beaten Italy, in Italy. That list is a joke.

And you guys like to tell us how much we overrate our team....
Do you really think Mexico is 15 spots better than Italy, or better than Italy at all. Hahahaha. At least none of us claim that. We claim we are better than your team, which is at least arguable, even if we're wrong.

Colombia is good but not better than Germany.

Weird I thought Silver's system was pretty accurate, and that his rankings looked pretty reasonable, around the time of the last World Cup, but the updated list that was posted above doesn't pass the smell test at all. I wonder what happened.

I agree. I started using them as my go to Rankings after they came out, but now it seems something's gone a little haywire. I'm sure Nate hasn't been involved at all in the past couple years. Here is a quote from @voros from 08/25/2011 in another thread:

"Well, Nate isn't running it anymore and I actually very much like Nate's methodology and his using additional data like personnel can only help the results. Where I might criticize it is that the rankings are in their infancy and with things like this there are always needs to be a lot of tweaking as you adjust to how real life results diverge from your rankings. For example, I don't think the "home continent advantage" worked out very well in last year's World Cup, Ghana not withstanding.

So in a sense SPI isn't a dinosaur but just the opposite. SPI started up sometime last year (or late in 2009 depending on when Nate started really doing it). Mine started in around 2004 (an offshoot of a Red Sox project) and I can tell you without hesitation that mine are a hell of a lot better now than they were in 2004 or 2005."

I know Voros has done some work since with ESPN (he posted Insider content regarding EURO 2012 qualification odds on 9/1/11), but I'm not sure how, or if at all, he has influenced SPI.

They keep updating them, so hopefully they take them seriously enough to have someone look at them and make sure something hasn't gone wrong with the data.

Did you even watch the Euro?

Haha, four of us made the Gringo Wall of Fame (me for the second time today) for saying that Italy is better than Mexico. Wow, they're more delusional than they used to be over there. Anyway, no ranking system is perfect, and honestly, as bad as the FIFA rankings are, those ESPN rankings and the ELO rankings are far from perfect as well. In other words, forget about what we are ranked in any system and just enjoy when the team plays.

Elo has the US at 26 (+59 pts, +12 spots year-to-year).

Colombia is at 10 after a phenomenal season under Peckerman (+102 pts and 12 places).

Ecuador is at 16th (+82pts, +11+).

Italy is 7th (+40, +3). Venezuela is 32 (+5, +4). Off their points, Italy would have a slight advantage in Venezuela and a large one at Italy.

Still disagree. To me, there's potentially three teams that can stop Italy when Buffon, Pirlo, Balotelli and De Rossi are at their A-game: Spain, possibly Germany, and possibly Brazil.