Yes, I imagine the same. Uruguay or Colombia could take a place but Portugal has the confed cup to gather some extra points, so it's unlikely.
Wow just realized it's possible to have Colombia, Uruguay, Italy, Netherlands and Spain all unseeded.
Based on the current FIFA Rankings, UEFA and CONMEBOL would have 4 seeds each. The unseeded teams would be: 10 from UEFA (1 pot and 2 more) 1 from CONMEBOL (assuming they beat OFC) 5 from CAF 3 or 4 from CONCACAF 4 or 5 from AFC If the 2 unseeded UEFA teams separated from the rest are selected randomly from the 10 unseeded UEFA teams (rather than taking the best 2 or worst 2), you could have this group where the record for worst Group Stage performance could be threatened: Argentina Portugal (unseeded from UEFA pot) Spain (unseeded from UEFA, CONMEBOL and CAF pot) United Arab Emirates
Actually I think Portugal will be unseeded too. Teams that did really well in the Euros or Copa America 2016 will probably drop in the rankings once those tournaments fall out of the 12 month window. That's bad news for Chile, Portugal and France. And good news for Spain and Uruguay. So I think that 8 seeds are: Russia Argentina Brazil Germany Belgium Spain France Colombia I pick Colombia over Uruguay because for Colombia even to qualify (which I think they'll manage eventually) they'll have to win a lot of games in 2017 which would logically help their ranking.
Won't Portugal and Chile have the opportunity to improve their FIFA Rankings in the Confederations Cup? The only competitions before the World Cup draw that are weighted more than World Cup qualifiers are the Confederations Cup and Gold Cup.
Oh yes, good point. I forgot about that that tournament which is weighted so heavily in the FIFA rankings formula. I guess they'd only drop a bit then. They might still drop a bit though since the opposition strength generally isn't as high as in, say, the Euros.
with the way, fifa ranking is calculated, it heavily helps lower ranked teams with a good qualification cycle to ricochet from nowhere to the top. in that case, i would not be suprised, if ireland, poland, ukraine, switzerland again, find themselves in the top 8 of the coca cola ranking on d-day ahead of the final draw.
True, good point. Switzerland is highly unlikely since 4 out of their 6 competitive matches this year will be against Andorra, Faroe Islands and Latvia (average FIFA ranking: 133). But look out for Ireland and Croatia!
Uruguay were the big losers last night. They might drop out of the top 12 or even top 15 by the time the April FIFA rankings come out! If they're not careful they might even fail to qualify for the World Cup!
It quite possible that 3 of them will not even qualify. Netherlands are 4th in their group halfway through, one of Italy or Spain will have to win a playoff. And it is possible, but I would not bet on it, that on of Uruguay or more likely Colombia fall out of the top 5 in Conmebol. Uruguay is sitting second with a relatively easy schedule to finish out the qualifying.
additionally, Uruguay managed to get a seed last time after winning the Copa, and Chile have 2 Copa wins at their back.
Russia Brazil Argentina Chili France Germany seem sure seeds to me. In balance for 2 remaining places: belgium, portugal, colombia, uruguay, spain.
Things got even worse for Uruguay. It seems like they always prefer drama in the Qualification process. And if some how , some way Colombia can keep on grinding results they may be a seed for a second straight tournament. (I am hoping.)
Where did you get the idea that points of those tournaments only count for 12 months ?. points count for 4 complete years (48 months), my friend After each year they count less than the year before, but still counts, and at the end are decisive. You don't really get much points by just winning the tournaments. You really get them by winning more matches in those tournaments. Usually teams that won them, is also the team that won the most amount of matches, but that not always happens. Sometimes whom comes behind won more matches than the team that won the tournament. And in both, Copa America Centenario and the Eurocup, played last year, the losing finalists won more matches than the team that at the end raised the cup, so they won more points than the champion. But champions do have another opportunity to win big points, in the next years, as by being champions they got tickets to play the Confederation cup, where each win counts the same as if it were the WC, which is proportionally a huge amount of points, the same year the draw for the WC takes place. So whomever manages to win, say, 3 matches in that short small tournament, they can almost get full certainty that they'll get seeded for that draw, if they qualify to the WC. The finalist of continental tournaments, only get to watch this tournament from home. And for the case of Uruguay, it wasn't their Copa America win what really got them to be seeds at the draw, but the points they won in the Confederation Cup played in Brazil 2013 (and they only won 2 matches, and had 1 draw, there).
Yes, I know. When I said 'drop out of the 12 month window' I meant their Euro 2016 run wouldn't count 100% anymore. And considering they are only barely clinging to a top 8 position even with Euro 2016 results counting 100%, that could be problematic. But yeah... after I posted that I remembered the Confederations' Cup which counts just as much. So 100% of Confed Cup results + 50% of Euro 2016 results could still see Portugal rank quite high in the FIFA rankings come October this year.
-- The latest FIFA rankings have been published. While FIFA's rankings have often been criticized, its good to get a glimpse of how various teams are doing according to FIFA. I was a bit surprised by the rankings, which included a lot of lesser known teams above what I would have expected and a lot of the usual suspects ranked below my expectations. While in some cases I know the results of some of these teams, such as Holland, haven't been stellar, in other cases I am wondering if the anomaly is due to the kind of flaws that appear to exist in FIFA's ranking system? https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/ As of 6 April 2017: 1- Brazil 2- Argentina 3- Germany 4- Chile 5- Columbia 6- France 7- Belgium 8- Portugal 9- Switzerland 10-Spain 11- Poland 12- Italy 13- Wales 14- England 15- Uruguay 16- Mexico 17- Peru 18- Croatia 19- Egypt 20- Costa Rica 21- Iceland 22- Turkey 23- USA 24- Slovakia 25- Ecuador 26- Northern Ireland 27- Rep of Ireland 28- Iran 29- Bosnia and Herzegovina 30- Senegal 31- Hungary 32- Netherlands 33- Cameroon 34- Sweden 35- Burkina Faso 36- Austria 37- Ukraine 38- Paraguay 39- Greece 40- Nigeria 41- Congo 42- Tunisia 43- Korea Rep 44- Japan 45- Ghana 46- Czech Rep 47- Romania 48- Cote d'Ivoire 49- Serbia 50- Australia Incidentally, if these rankings were used to project the 32 teams in Russia 2018, these would be the teams that would make it: Host: Russia UEFA (13): 1- Germany 2- France 3- Belgium 4- Portugal 5- Switzerland 6- Spain 7- Poland 8- Italy 9- Wales 10- England 11- Croatia 12- Iceland 13- Turkey CAF (5): 1- Egypt 2- Senegal 3- Cameroon 4- Burkina Faso 5- Nigeria CONMEBOL (4.5): 1- Brazil 2- Argentina 3- Chile 4- Columbia (5- Uruguay as playoff team ranked higher than OFC team, New Zealand) AFC (4.5): 1- Iran 2- Korea Rep 3- Japan 4- Australia (5- Saudi Arabia as playoff team ranked higher than #4 ranked CONCACAF team, Panama) CONCACAF (3): 1- Mexico 2- Costa Rica 3- USA OFC (0.5): none
At least three of the teams you listed cannot qualify due to who they are grouped with. Croatia, Iceland, and Turkey are in the same group, which can qualify no more than two of them. There are winner-take-all groups with Cameroon and Nigeria and with Senegal and Burkina Faso.
True, but I was trying to simply give a sense of what the Word Cup representation would look like if the FIFA rankings were used to project the teams based on the present allocations. Incidentally, for what it is worth, the allocation of the various confederations among the top 32 and top 50 is as follows: UEFA: 19/32 - 26/50 Conmebol: 7/32 - 8/50 Concacaf: 3/32 - 3/50 CAF: 2/32 - 9/50 AFC: 1/32 - 4/50 OFC: 0
Their FIFA ranking has taken such a hit that even if they manage to finish second in their group (best case scenario), they'll likely be unseeded in the playoff draw meaning a potential matchup against Italy/Spain, Portugal, Belgium, etc.