They are currently the #14 ranked UEFA team and the model just takes the top 13 for demonstration purposes.
So I was looking at the pots Edgar had on his link and it appears they breakdown as follows: - Pot A - Top 7 seeds + South Africa - Pot B - 8 UEFA - Pot C - 5 AFC + 3 CONCACAF - Pot D - 5 CAF + 2 CONMEBOL + 1 CONCACAF (although, if CONMEBOL beats CONCACAF in the playoff then it would be a simple 5 CAF + 3 CONMEBOL) Is it pretty much locked in that CAF will be paired with CONMEBOL and AFC will be paired with CONCACAF? Pots A and B should be set as far as the format goes so my question is more geared towards C & D. Of course, much of this depends on who the top 7 seeded teams are. I'm assuming the breakdown will be 5 UEFA and 2 CONMEBOL, unless Mexico miraculously leaps over Portugal and the Netherlands.
In 2006 Concacaf was paired with Afc (Asian Confederation) and Conmebol was paired with CAF (African Confederation) In 2002 Concacaf was paired with CAF and Conmebol was paired with AFC In 1998 Concacaf was paired with CAF and Conmebol was paired with AFC. Who knows what fifa will do this time
Re: 2010 Seeding Formula: January 2008 update [R] (I put the R in the title b/c I talked about the Portugal result) By losing in the quarterfinals, Portugal missed a good opportunity to overtake England or France for one of the last seeds. Portugal should get a good boost in the FIFA Rankings for its two wins in a "Continental Final" especially with the UEFA multiplier. England, obviously, won't get any such boost, while France won't get much because it only earned one tie. If the Dutch win the whole tournament, or reach the final, they could be in seed territory as well. It will be hard to overtake England, because of its high World Cup performance number in the formula. But if England falls far enough in the FIFA Rankings, and the Dutch, Portugal or (less likely) Mexico, jump high enough, England could be left out of the seedings for WCup 2010. Then again, they have to qualify, too. Does anyone there know how far England would have to fall to have a chance of missing a seed? Country Total - Performance - Ranking 6 England 49.3 26.3 23.0 7 France 49.3 23.3 26.0 -------------------------------- 8 Portugal 45.3 22.3 23.0 9 Mexico 38.0 19.3 18.7 10 Netherlands 38.0 14.7 23.3
Re: 2010 Seeding Formula: January 2008 update [R] Good... but they could have been better. Both Portugal and the Netherlands made up a lot of ground on England. England will probably pick up one or two FIFA spots on France, but they lost many spots to Portugal and Netherlands. Neither will catch England quite yet, but they have now put seeds in place if they dominate WCQs while England struggles to qualify. A Portugal-Netherlands Euro final could have knocked England out of the WC seeds, but a quarterfinal bid for those two teams did allow them to make up a majority of the ground between them and the Brits.
Re: 2010 Seeding Formula: January 2008 update [R] Actually, the distance between England and France is the same - 2 places. -> link. I'll try to update the ranking tomorrow.
Re: 2010 Seeding Formula: January 2008 update [R] Yeah... I was being an idiot and looking at the wrong thing. I already saw your update with England only two spots away from France, but rather than compare it to last month's FIFA rankings, I compared it to the most recent seeding ranking that you did where France was 3 spots off from England. I forgot that the ranking is based on December '07, '08 & '09 rankings, and the most recent seedings are affected by the now-set-in-stone December '07 rankings - and not just the momentary rankings...
Re: 2010 Seeding Formula: January 2008 update [R] Thanks a lot. Is there any chance that you could extend that to the top 25? Or would that create a whole lot of extra work on your end?
Does only the ranking in the specific months (12/07 12/08 11/09) count or is it just the moment where they use the average ranking of the whole year? For example 01/07 -11/07 Rank 1 and 12/07 Rank 6. Would rank 6 count or would (11*1+1*6)/12 = 1.42 count?
Correct, although obviously FIFA could change their seeding system again. They have a habit of manipulating the seeding formula to get the seeds that they want.
There is weak evidence for this claim, but it is not an outrageous claim either. I don't remember how the 1994 seeds were determined. AFAIK, 1998 was the first time the seeding formula was made public; regardless it was different from the one used in 1994. There was a big controversy regrading Romania being seeded over England and a smaller one over Nigeria not getting a seed. In 2002 I don't remember any controversies, but I think that some tweaking of the formula did take place (Edgar will correct me if I'm wrong). In 2006 the formula was changed one more time. While it didn't change the seeds, the fact that it was changed post WCQ makes one wander why? For 2010, the qualifiers are already on the way and yet there is no word on how the seeding will be determined. A great deal of small WC details are determined years in advance and yet a key criterion is kept secret until almost the last minute. To be clear, I think that from an objective point of view FIFA ended up with the right seeds for the last 3 WCs (as a fan I would have made some changes). My issue is with the fact that they don't announce the formula as the time of the WCQ draw (or shortly thereafter).
Exactly, it's incredibly suspicious that they don't announce the seeding methodology until all of the world cup qualifiers are known. All of the rest of the qualifying schedule is set years in advance, but FIFA refuses to publish the seeding methodology before they actually announce the eight seeds?? Definitely fishy.
In 1998, the WC performance part was 60% of the final formula, with the ranking part counting for the remaining 40%. In 2002, they were 50-50. In 2006 they dropped the oldest of the three World Cups. Had Denmark qualified instead of Switzerland - they would have been seeded at the expense of Argentina (see here) - that's probably one of the reasons they chose to wait until after the WCQ ended.
Hm, i m very curious what was the seeding formula for wc 1998 if u consider that Croatia, Japan and Jamaica was in same group!?! First time for all 3 country and they manage to be in same group? Who was in which pot and why?
This is the formula -> link. But the seeding formula was only used to determine the first 8 seeds - actually the first 7, as France were hosts. The other 24 teams were split into three pots on geographical criteria. Croatia was in the UEFA pot Japan in the AFC + CONMEBOL pot. Jamaica in the CONCACAF + CAF pot.