I believe he meant UEFA doesn't use them for their own tournaments. As the World Cup is a FIFA tournament, they have to use FIFA rankings if using seeded draws.
Except maybe for 2006 these were FIFA ranks. But this wasn't - UEFA was allowed to choose their own method (which was points per game over the last two qualifying tournaments) They have always been hard to understand - the case of Wales above is interesting. They were "Pot 1" on FIFA ranks - so they must be good (j/k it's FIFA ranks). But they just finished in the Semi finals of the last Euro - so they must be good (assuming you think "results" are more important rather than reputation). Yet if we had used the 2015 UEFA nations ranks (as per the euro draw) they would have been Pot 3 - and then only because Russia weren't in the draw - otherwise they would have been Pot 4 as they were ranked 28th - so they clearly suck. But that ranking doesn't include the results of the Euro finals - so ignores the obvious upswing that Wales have been on. But even if we did include the Euro finals result for Wales in the Nations Rank - how much would a semifinals appearance lift the 28th ranked team? Just 1 spot (above Slovenia, Iceland would also lift because of their results and Wales would just fail to catch Norway). So still bottom of Pot 3.* No one can justify the height Wales rose to in the FIFA ranks, nor Montenegro a bit earlier (IIRC as one point they were in line for a Seeding spot in the 2014 finals if they had qualified, although that could have been 2010) Even Peru at 10 seems a bit dodgy. The key to getting a ridiculous rank seems to be two-fold. 1) Get on a good run against good teams (and to be fair Wales did this) 2) Don't play any useless teams in friendlies and as few really poor teams in qualifiers as possible (and Wales' opponents in the Euro quals - Israel, Cyprus and Bosnia, seem to be relatively highly ranked in FIFA terms for the sort of teams at each level). J * - this is something you might want to consider. Say I told you that a team went into a finals tournament ranked 28th and made the semi-finals. Where would you say they should be ranked after the tournament? And if I told you the answer was 27th, what would you think of those rankings.
We should have our first eliminations from the tournament proper today. Morocco, Saudi Arabia + Egypt could all go if results go as expected. Not a good day for Arab / MENA (Middle East / North African) football. Morocco will be the first to go if they lose to Portugal today. After that, it's Saudi Arabia and Egypt will go if Uruguay win against Saudi. A draw sees only Egypt go out. Should Saudi Arabia win, then both will stay alive until the final round.
Africa has started off terribly. But what about South America? Uruguay the only team to win a game yet, albeit chances are that will change tomorrow the latest. As for now they are no better than Asia. BTW Peru and Morocco - two teams which dominated both their games, yet somehow are already out of the cup.
Honestly? I think they will. Nigeria's midfield was better than Argentina's is. Croatia will have open season in the middle of the field and Messi & co will be feeding off of scraps.
Yeah you have a point. Although Brazil were very unlucky. They were way superior against Switzerland and should have won. Now its looking like Brazil and Uruguay are the only CONMEBOL teams that are sure to advance. Peru is out, and Argentina might be as well soon. Colombia we have no idea, but they have an even chance as well.
The fact is, Poland really does not have many good players. Lewandowski, Milik, and Szczesny are their best players. Zelinski and Glik look promising, but the rest of the players are getting old and are way past their prime. Glik was out as well which created chaos in defense.
They’re not really unbalanced after Lewandowski who’s obviously a superstar on another level. If you look at transfermarkt, Zielinski is their 2nd highest valued player at 29MM pounds and Bereszynski is their 8th highest valued player at 11MM pounds. They certainly have the talent that they could have made a deepish run. The issue is just that Group H was a really deep balanced group and someone had to lose. It seems like a weak group because Poland’s the highest seeded team and they’re clearly not a Top 10 nation, but having Senegal and Japan as the two weakest nations is probably the best bottom half of any group, and Colombia’s very tough too. Switch Poland out for any of the other seeded teams and it’s the clear group of death of the tournament.
If Argentina had played the same teams as Poland so far they’d be sitting on 0 points instead of 1 and they’d already be out of the World Cup.