(Cross-posted to Climbing the Ladder) The new FIFA rankings are out for December. This is the big month that we've been waiting for. The rankings this month get locked into place, giving us 1/3rd of the rankings half of the formula. So now we know 4/6ths of the total formula (which is of course, half World Cup performance and half FIFA rankings: 12/07, 12/08, and 11/09). The actual rankings themselves were a bore though, as there was only a tiny change due to Japan falling out of a tie with Guinea. So currently England and Portugal are still tied for the last seed. Top 7 teams seeded (South Africa automatically seeded as hosts) Code: Total WC FIFA Change 1 Brazil 60.3 29.3 31 0.0 2 Germany 58.3 30.3 28 0.0 3 Italy 57.3 27.3 30 0.0 4 Spain 54.3 25.3 29 0.0 5 Argentina 53.0 21.0 32 0.0 6 France 49.3 23.3 26 0.0 7 England 47.3 26.3 21 0.0 7 Portugal 47.3 22.3 25 0.0 9 Netherlands 38.7 14.7 24 0.0 10 Mexico 37.3 19.3 18 0.0 11 Czech 33.0 6.0 27 0.0 12 Croatia 32.0 9.0 23 0.0 13 USA 28.7 13.7 15 0.0 14 Turkey 27.0 10.0 17 0.0 15 Paraguay 24.7 11.7 13 0.0 16 Japan 22.3 13.3 9 -0.5 17 Greece 22.0 0.0 22 0.0 18 South Korea 20.7 15.7 5 0.0 19 Romania 20.0 0.0 20 0.0 20 Scotland 19.0 0.0 19 0.0 21 Nigeria 16.7 2.7 14 0.0 22 Colombia 16.0 0.0 16 0.0 23 Senegal 15.7 8.7 7 0.0 24 Australia 15.3 11.3 4 0.0 25 Cameroon 15.0 3.0 12 0.0 26 Cote d'Ivoire 14.0 6.0 8 0.0 27 Uruguay 13.7 2.7 11 0.0 28 Iran 11.3 5.3 6 0.0 29 Guinea 10.0 0.0 10 0.5 29 Saudi Arabia 10.0 8.0 2 0.0 31 South Africa 4.0 3.0 1 0.0 32 Honduras 3.0 0.0 3 0.0 Thanks to eldiablito and Edgar for their work on this in previous months. FAQ Why is this list different than FIFA's Coca-Cola rankings? Because Fifa's Coca-Cola rankings are only part of the complex seeding formula. What is the seeding formula used for? The seeding formula is used to determine which 8 countries receive seeds. Those 8 teams are heads of each of the 8 groups in the world cup. By being seeded, they get the luxury of not having to play another seeded team until the knockout stage. What is the seeding formula exactly? The complex formula takes into account the performance at the last 2 world cups and the FIFA rankings. Part A: World Cup performance = (2002*1+2006*2)/3 Part B: FIFA Ranking = (12/2007 rank+12/2008 rank+11/2009 rank)/3 Part A + Part B = world cup seeding formula For the purposes of this showing you the current standings in this thread, the current FIFA rank will count as all three years. How is the world cup performance determined? 0 points are awarded if the country failed to qualify that year. The 16 teams that didn't make it out of the group stage are ranked (Points, GD, GF). The bottom 8 get 8 points each. The top 8 get 9 points each. All the countries that advanced to the knockout stage are placed from 1st place to 16th place. 1st place (champs) receives 32 points. 2nd place receives 31 points. 3rd place receives 30 points. etc. All the way to 16th place which receives 17 points. How are the points for FIFA ranking awarded? Similarly to above. First, all 32 teams that qualify are ranked by their FIFA ranking. The best is given 32 points. The worst 1 point. If two or more teams have the same FIFA ranking, the points are not divided among them. Instead, the one shown first in the FIFA rankings gets the most points and so on. How do you pick which 32 countries to run the seeding formula? I pick the countries based on their FIFA ranking by federation. For example, the best 13 UEFA teams by FIFA ranking since 13 UEFA teams will qualify. This is done primarily for two reasons. It keeps the criteria objective and it runs the formula with the worst-case scenario in mind. 13.0-UEFA 6.0-CAF (5+host) 4.5-AFC 4.5-CONMEBOL 3.5-CONCACAF 0.5-OFC Are you sure that FIFA will use this seeding formula? No, it might change slightly. For 2006 they only used the previous 2 World Cups instead of 3 like they did in 2002. But they've been using the same basic formula since 1994. Previous Editions July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007
Mock Draw (England and Portugal are currently tied for the final seed. I decided to use England because their World Cup performance, aka the half of the formula that is fully set in stone, is higher) Pot 1: Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Spain Pot 2: Croatia, Czech, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, Turkey Pot 3: Cameroon, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Nigeria, Paraguay, Senegal, Uruguay Pot 4: Australia, Honduras, Iran, Japan, Korea Republic, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, USA Group A: South Africa, Turkey, Uruguay, Japan Group B: Germany, Croatia, Paraguay, Australia Group C: France, Portugal, Cameroon, Mexico Group D: England, Netherlands, Guinea, Iran Group E: Brazil, Czech, Cote d'Ivoire, USA Group F: Italy, Scotland, Colombia, Saudi Arabia Group G: Spain, Greece, Nigeria, Korea Republic Group H: Argentina, Romania, Senegal, Honduras
No joke. Can't imagine many circumstances where Honduras would be considered the most likely CONCACAF team to go through to the knockout phase. It also makes me thing that despite all the carping about "Who's dragging the World Cup down?" that maybe it's getting to be "no-one." I mean, this set of groups really doesn't look that bad. ..ok. Except for maybe groups A, F and H. After having been in the Group of Death a number of times, I think Italy and Argentina would gladly take the ones above.
World Cup performance? I must've missed something, didn't Portugal finish 4th and England finish in the QFs?
England better hope that Portugal doesn't make a deep run in the Euro. England has such a big edge in the World Cup portion of the seed formula that it'll be hard for the Netherlands to catch them through the Coke Rankings.
scaryice, i love the mock draw when ever im boredi try to do one but i dont know the format if you have time do you think you can messag em how to do it, and also with the wc prelim draw, the neatherands and scotland cant qualfy simutaniously its one or the other
The basic idea is to take the top 32 teams based on the FIFA ranking that can qualify, this means: South Africa - Qualified as host Top 13 from UEFA (but no more than 2 teams from one group) Top 5 from CAF Top 4 from CSF Top 4 from AFC Top 3 from CONCACAF The higher of CSF 5th and CONCACAF 4th The higher of AFC 5th and OFC 1st At this point it looks like we'll have 5 teams from CSF and 5 from AFC. In that is the case, the pots for the WC might be: Top seeds: South Africa + the 7 above teams UEFA Pot: the other 8 UEFA teams (UEFA is likely to get 5 seeds) CAF+CSF: 5 CAF qualifiers and 3 CSF non-seeds AFC+CONCACAF: there is also a possibility that AFC will be group with the CSF non-seeds. There is also a restriction that two teams from the same confederation (other than UEFA) can't be in the same group. So in this example South Africa will get one of the three CSF teams While Brazil and Argentina will each get one of the CAF teams. The way I understand it, UEFA will eliminated the worst 2th place finisher, but results against the 6th place teams (maybe also the 5th place team) will be ignored. If my understanding is correct, both Netherlands and Scotland can still qualify (one as a group winner and the other via the UEFA playoffs).
That's right. South Africa will always be team A1, while based on previous tournaments it's likely that Italy will be F1. And I use the random.org sequence generator to do the draw. Also, CSF? Never heard that before.
thanks for the info on the draw, but as for the scotland and dutch group, all groups except theirs have 6 teams, the neatherlands and scotlands having 5, all the other group's second place teams will go into a playoff but since soctlands group has the odd number only the first place team will qualify
A second team from the Netherlands /Scotland can qualify. The 8 best 2nd place teams go into the playoffs. Games against the sixth place teams don't count for qualifying for the playoffs.
Well, remember last cycle when we were a smidgen away from getting a seed, and Mexico got one instead? This formula they use pretty much gurantees that we will not have even a tiny chance of a seed, even if we win the Confederations Cup. For one thing, we are still ranked behind Mexico despite winning the Gold Cup (I guess that's what flopping at Copa America will do for you). For another, the double weight given to the 06 tournament, where that dentist killed us, over the 02 tournament with the 8th place finish leave us with no chance to have the WC portion of the ranking help us at all. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons the ranking formula is so pathetic. WC results are a major component of the ranking in the first place, so building a combined formula using WC results and Fifa rankings is redundant. And I'm sure that's on purpose. Fifa wants those big titan games to occur so they engineer a ranking system that guarantees that if you've done well at the World Cup, you can do well at the World Cup. Frankly, a level playing field would make for quite a few knockout games that nobody would really care to watch. So if you're not a big seven country, it seems you're out of luck. But, wait. This time around, there is a host, an automatic group A leader, that is just plain sad in the world rankings, and didn't even appear in the 06 tournament. The host country, South Africa, is very low in the Fifa rankings, whereas last time Germany would have been seeded regardless, so while all eight groups had a solid top seed, this time, group A will be a breeze. Guaranteed avoidance of Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy, France and Spain, for one thing, and a good chance for a team ranked in the top 20 to take top spot in the group, thereby avoiding the winner of group B in round two. So, wouldn't it be just amazing if the USA could secure a spot in Group A?!? I know there's only a 12.5% chance of that happening, but, man, that could go a long way to helping us to a top eight finish in 2010, making a seed for the 2014 tournament a very real possibility.
Let's take a moment here to look at this formula, particularly the Fifa ranking part. The Fifa ranking is based on a weighted average of the last four years of play, with games in the current year rated at 100%, those from a year ago at 50%, two years ago at 30%, and three years ago at 20%. There is no logical reason to then compute an average from the last three years' rankings. And here's why: Consider a team that plays two friendlies against the same opponent. (I pick friendlies since there is a variable that weights the importance of matches, and there aren't any WCQs in 2007 for the USA). One of these is played in 2009, as a prep for a WCQ, and is a victory, the other was a loss in 2007. Clearly the 2009 game's outcome is a better measure of this team's ability. But in the seed formula, the 2009 game only shows up once, in the Nov '09 ranking. The 2007 game is there almost twice: a whole game in the 12/07 ranking, half a game in the 12/08 ranking, and 30% of a game in the 11/09 ranking. (That first friendly,then, is 1.8 games--nearly twice as significant than the later win.) For Concacaf, a team's performance getting to the Hexagonal (2008 games--each 1.5 matches in the WC formula) is more significant to Fifa than it's performance in the Hex (all 2009 games, a mere 1.0 game in the WC algorithm) when it comes to the WC formula. Say the US cranks its way to the Hex then finishes 3rd, while Mexico stumble into the Hex and then finishes 1st. Most sentient characters would say that toping the elite group from one's region is more significant that bashing the hell out of minnows, but Fifa disagrees. This business of averaging the last three years worth of Coke numbers really is amazingly stupid, isn't it? The only way that it isn't stupid is if the purpose is NOT to guage how well teams are doing now, but how well they were doing two years ago. This meets fifa's objective of showcasing teams that aren't necessarily very good, but are well known. Even upstart seeds (if such a thing were possible--and the first part of the WC algorithm nearly precludes that possibility) will be rewarded for what they do three years before the tournament, instead of just a few months.
I'll ignore the fact that you're not half as original as you may sound when talking about the redundancy of the rankings/WC results formula. In 02, BOTH hosts countries would not normally have been seeded and they were. In 98. France would probably not have been seeded for having missed out 94. I think that in 94 (I could be wrong on this one) the US were seeded. Its not the first time it has happened and football economics being what they are, it won't be the last. In the 02 example, both host teams finished first in their group. By any estimation, Belgium should have been sure to grab the first spot - instead they finished 2nd and met Brazil. Korea's group was less clear cut with Portugal being so inconsistent prior to qualifying for that cup, but Korea still topped the group, and the only reason the US got their best enemies Mexico (and by extension got into the QF) lay in Italy half assing it as usual in their group stages. And all of this only came about because of the 'superbowl draw' designed to avoid the hosts meeting before the final and by extension, allowing teams having met in the group stage to meet in the semis. Getting to the QF is a lot more about luck for teams like the US than anything else - chances are you'll finish first in the group and the top seed in the opposing group will finish second...
Host countries get seeds, yes it's true. And the US was relatively lucky in 2002 getting one of the hosts' groups. We were also relatively lucky in 1994 that a 3rd place team could get into the round of 16 (though we might've finished in 2nd if there had been two more groups). What exactly is your point, though, regarding lack of originality in the discussion of the redundancy in the world ranking portion of the WC seed formula? Do you mean that others have already pointed out this redundancy? Or are you taking issue with the point regarding an intent to seed teams based on historical performance and a deliberate choice to use a formula that undervalues current form?
Yes, but in 2006 we were very unlucky of not getting a seed over Mexico and playing teams of the likes of Portugal, Iran, and Angola in whcih we probably would of advanced.
One bummer about our group in Germany was that we were the team that had to go up against the Czechs first. Those older players might not have had three good games in them, said Mooch Myernick, but they certainly had one, and that was the performance we were up against. As for Mexico's group, it was a walkover, despite the fact that Portugal is a quality, if hack-infested, team. Angola and Iran were jokes, and everyone knew it.
bingo. As far as the 06 group goes, it was pretty clear to anyone following the script that the US wasn't going to be seeded ahead of Mexico. Any of the reasons by which the US would have been seeded involved a drastic change of the seeding procedure that wouldn't have made any sense re: Fifa's desire to protect its traditional big teams. I also personally think that if the US had played Iran they won't have done better than they did against Italy i.e. a scrappy draw - the WC98 precedent and extra sport considerations included. As far as the Czech Republic is concerned, most people seem to forget that they ended up going into the tournament with only 2 fit strikers (their 1st choice and their 5th choice) and promptly lost the first on an injury after opening the scoring. One could argue that the 'aging' nature of the squad was responsible for their injury problems, but I still believe the devastating performance they put up against the US was not an anomaly and it was a series of freak events that kept them out of the second round.
Ummmmm, Iran and Angola are jokes who would of been a lot easier. Ghana is a quality team, and Czech is good, example look at Euro, and Portugal could of been beaten, look at 2002.
Thanks that is interesting. Have teams like Honduras, Guinea, Cote D'Ivoire played in a World Cup before?