Not so sure the top 15 in the fifa ranking going to be seeded. Because its going to be a UEFA team in every group. So one pot all the uefa teams and the other two pots i dont know.
http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-rank...on-top-as-new-ranking-formula-introduced.html New ranking is out with explanations of formula and new starting points for each nation.
The notes on the FIFA website do make some explanation of the starting point values used: "With respect to the introduction of SUM, it was important to transition smoothly from the previous FWR to the new one. For the initial seeding of teams in the new FWR, teams were evenly distributed over a range of approximately 800 to 1600 points. The point difference between two adjacent teams was set at 4 points. Upper value corresponds to approximate points total of best ranked team in previous FWR in June 2018 (e.g. Germany = 1558 points)" https://resources.fifa.com/image/up...orld-ranking.pdf?cloudid=iklxmt2jejtjwf8qecba
I guess that Mr. Chip tweet forced FIFA's hand to correct the rankings...'cause anything that failed to have France as #1 after beating Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Belgium and Croatia (all top-20 opponents in the previous ranking) en route to their world championship would've been rightly panned.
These rankings are absolute garbage after around the top 10. Complete rubbish. It seriously is not that hard to come up with a half decent formula. FIFA is a useless organization.
OVERRATED Switzerland Poland Chile Wales USA Austria Tunisia Slovakia Northern Ireland Romania Paraguay Costa Rica Ukraine Scotland Montenegro Bulgaria Jamaica Curacao El Salvador Kyrgz Rep UNDERRATED Morocco Russia Nigeria Cameroon Japan South Korea Ecuador It seems to me a few things. 1. Not much change has happened since the World Cup 2. Every concacaf side other than Mexico seems terribly overrated 3. A lot of European sides who did not qualify for the WC seem terribly overrated 4. African sides as a whole are underrated LOL Russia who made the quarter finals are #49 Nigeria beat Iceland handily but are #49 while Iceland is #32 (Iceland has been losing a lot previous to WC as well) Japan makes the 2nd round yet are ranked #55. Jamaica is one above them at #54. I seriously think there is some terrible part of the formula that seriously overranks the concacaf sides. This is an utter joke as is Costa Rica at #32, somehow above Serbia who beat them. Curacao ? LOL How on earth is Poland still so high up after getting beat by Senegal and thrashed by Colombia, and their only victory against Japan (who FIFA ranks so lowly) Poland also was losing tons of matches before the WC.
I'm guessing Japan's low ranking has to do with results prior to the World Cup...as for what Jamaica's doing so high up, I imagine it's thanks to their runs to the last two Gold Cup finals, although I'd agree that that should not place them higher than a World Cup R16 finisher. As for Curacao, no idea what your problem with them is: they won the (last-ever) Caribbean Cup in 2016, took 4 points off of Bolivia! in their friendly series, and beat Qatar in their own house. 80s seem about right for them. Perhaps FIFA generally rating Concacaf higher than Africa has to do with Concacaf outperforming Africa in four out of the last five World Cups with two fewer representatives
"Nigeria beat Iceland handily but are #49 while Iceland is #32 (Iceland has been losing a lot previous to WC as well)" Symptomatic of the same folly that plagues your post: presuming that World Cup results are or should be the only factor in determining rankings. Yes, Nigeria beat them; but you look at what both have been up to in recent years, Iceland's results are more impressive (thanks in part to getting to play better competition in UEFA, to be sure). And let's get an easy counterargument of yours out of the way: Concacaf doesn't actually have depth, and gets WC results thanks to three teams. True, and that's kind of the point: said three teams get a bunch of points from when they have good WC performances. Then, when they lose in WCQ or the Gold Cup, others in the region get more points from having beaten the established sides. Call it trickle-down ranking improvement
LOL Mexico is ranked high. Fine. Costa Rica is not better than any African side at this current WC. In fact quite a few African sides that didn't make the World Cup are better than Costa Rica. USA at 22 is a joke despite them having their worst WC run in ages and they are still at #22. If you cannot see that as flawed I cannot help you. Concacaf "outperforming" CAF in four of the last five WC's as you put it has nothing to do with THE CURRENT. Apart from Mexico Concacaf was trash. I noted that I had no problem with Mexico's ranking. The rest are a joke. Did Curacao beat a full strength Bolivia or was it a weakened side ?
Never have I said WC is the only thing that counts. Our record is actually very good before the World Cup beating AFrican champs Cameroon 4-0, tying them at home, beating Algeria, tying them at home, and beating Zambia twice. In the same time Iceland was losing against Finland and Croatia. If a team ranked around #50 before the World Cup cannot even move up at all after beating a team ranked around #20 by 2-0, then these rankings are useless. We qualify undefeated from the African WCQ group of death, getting the best of the AFrican champs, and then go on to beat a side ranked in the twenties at the WC, by 2-0, and we are still ranked in the fifties. Utter nonsense. What kind of comedy is that ? The main problem I see with these rankings, is that they are far too slow moving. THey reflect way too far back, and that is evidenced by Japan, Nigeria, Russia's poor ranking, and other teams living off of 4 years ago like Costa Rica.
But with the new formula of the World Cup is the only thing that has counted so far. All other countries kept their ranking from the previous formula. All of these problems that you have with the rankings are because of the old formula. It will take us a full World Cup cycle to see if they fix the apparent problems that you see.
All of your overrated and underrated teams that didn't play in the World Cup are ranked there because of the old formula. All of your problems are with the old formula. The new formula will take a full 4 years to have enough impact to overcome the "problems" with the old formula.
and what of the over ranked and under ranked sides that did play at the WC ? I dont see what positive impact these new rankings have made. I think the fact that FIFA did not release their rankings when they said they would, just shows how much of a joke this is.
Poland started in 8th and dropped to 18th playing only 3 games. Russia started in 70th and rose to 49th by winning 2.75 games. What else were you expecting? Poland was ranked way too high in the old formula. Russia was ranked way too low in the old formula. They're now starting to move towards where they should be ranked but it won't happen overnight.
Once the World Cup is over, and a new World Cup cycle starts, I am not sure rankings mean all that much anyway. For me, at the start of each World Cup cycle, we begin a new chapter and the story of how sides rate cannot be told until you read more into the new chapter. The rankings we have now, in the meantime, reflect (however imperfectly) the story about how teams did mostly in the course of the last World Cup cycle (2014-2018). Of course, since the World Cup is the most important tournament in football, I believe its results should have an even bigger impact in rankings published right after the World Cup than they apparently have. To me, it particularly strains credulity to have a side like Japan ranked so low. And I agree that Concacaf sides in general appear overrated by the FIFA rankings (even as modified), while there are some CAF sides that even after a World Cup that was poor for CAF still appear underrated. Mathematically, what I would do is to give World Cup results a much bigger weight and impact but have that heighted (super) impact and weight wear off quickly (e.g., after 12 months). Eventually, for every new World Cup cycle, it should be the new results in the new World Cup cycle that should matter most and not the old results from the World Cup cycle that has concluded. But for a period right after the World Cup, the rankings should be a lot more similar and consistent with how sides did at the World Cup than anything else.
Costa Rica were definitely better than the Egyptian dumpster fire. If you completely ignore everything other than WCQ, I cannot help you either. The US won the Gold Cup last year - say whatever you will, but that did help. Oh, I'm including the current - Concacaf got 1 team in the R16 to Africa's grand total of 0. Can't defend Panama, but how were Costa Rica trash? They barely lost to Serbia, held Brazil up until injury time and got a draw off of Switzerland. Mediocre showing, but hardly trash like Egypt straight-up collapsing against Russia and SAUDI ARABIA. As far as the FIFA rankings are concerned, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, it was a Bolivia side in renovation, missing the one of two players they have abroad (e.g. Marcelo Martins).
The new rankings are just the old rankings (with arbitrary points assigned based on a nations position in the old system, not their points) with world cup games (and any later non FIFA date friendlies) being the only ones that have had an effect. It will take around two years before the new system has any significant affect on the rankings, and even then their will be the odd issue based on a teams activity. As others have said, it will probably be not until the next round of Confederation Championships and World Cup qualifiers have all been completed until the new system is fully in effect. Until then, it doesn't really matter.
So I went back and applied the new standard to the June 2014 rankings (Spain 1600, Germany 1596, ...) and then calculated the rankings with the new formula over the next four years including the 2014 and 2018 World Cups. After the 2018 World Cup, the #1 team in the world is...France. @vancity eagle will be disappointed to hear the US would be #15 in the world after the 2018 World Cup and reached 11th after the 2017 Gold Cup. Other interesting "current" rankings are Russia 24th, Poland 25th, Japan 37th, Korea 43rd. You can really see the impact of not losing points in the knockout rounds.
Here's the spreadsheet if you want to dig into how the new formula changed over an entire World Cup cycle. You can view the pages in your browser or download the spreadsheet without creating a Box account. https://app.box.com/s/jefq8yi8swjbm8izh62jm1quvhws6z55 I took the June 2014 rankings and applied the same rules that FIFA did so that Spain was #1 with 1600 points and then dropped by four points per spot. You can then view the rankings as of August 1st of each year. A few things to note. There are various 2nd and 3rd tier tournaments held in various confederations where I had to decide what weight to give them. Examples include the African Nations Championship (which is only for players who play in that countries domestic league), various regional cups in Asia, Africa, and North America. I gave these the weights of friendlies since FIFA treated them as such in the old rankings. A few exceptions include the CFU Carribbean cup and the AFC Challenge Cup which acted as qualifiers for their confederation championship. If anyone wants to know how the results of a specific team impacted their ranking let me know.
Wow USA at 13 and Mexico at 20 and Costa Rica at 28. I think the Gold Cup win has to much wieghting. There is no way Mexico should be below US. Also looking at the new FIFA rank there is a flaw in the system. USA goes up 3 points and Mexico and Costa Rica went down points. It just does not seem right that a team is penalized for playing in the WC and a team not in the WC can gain points. Maybe all teams that don’t make the WC should get some kind of penalty when playing pre WC friendlies, like they can only earn half points for a win... or maybe they automatically lose a set number of points for not making it. Or a point freeze takes place for 3 games.
You're looking at the pre-2014 World Cup rankings. Those were the actual FIFA rankings at the time. The August 2018 rankings would have Mexico 10th and USA 15th.