The actual rankings were posted just above already, but for the qualitative explanation: England dropped points to Sweden and Australia but picked up some from Brazil, for a net loss of points. Since they were only 1pt ahead of France in the last ranking, this all but guaranteed they'd drop below France (much less Germany) unless France (or Germany) dropped a similar amount. Germany did drop points from the draw to Spain, but also gained against Austria and Italy, which still apparently ended as a net loss of points, just not a big loss. France gained points from Australia and Brazil (and maybe gained from Cameroon too, but the change either way there would have been effectively zero). So those all in combination are why France and England have swapped places. (There was still a big gap between #12 and #10 in the previous rankings, so it'll take a while for Spain to bridge that gap.) Interestingly, with France gaining some and Germany losing some, France is now within striking distance of Germany. If the German struggles of the past year or two continue into next year, France might become the 6th nation ever to reach the top 2 (after USA, Norway, Germany, Brazil, and England).
It's not so that we are "completely oblivious to the concept of ranking", but like to me it isnot an important issue. I always was surprised how much emphasis was placed on it by for instance Yanks going into men's WC's. My take is that to get to the final you will have to eliminate the strong ones, so it doesnot matter when you meet them. Plus it didnot matter much for our results when we were paired with big guns. Remember the Euro, in which we were put in the same group as the WC finalists and our group with WC2010 Spain and Chili. I think for those that make it an issue it has to do with the notion that the best they can do is to advance as far as possible and from that POV it's important to be seeded favourably. If your take is to win it, it doesnot matter what your seeding is. You'll meet the big guns anyway.
Agree that Holland has a good record of performing against the odds in groups of death and such. Following that trend, let's hope to be in the same group as the US
Unless a pot 3 team starts surging in the next 6m, I don't think there will be a group of death this tournament! That said, I think most US fans would absolutely rejoice if we got NED (or any other teams) instead of SWE in our group. X-D
Well, maybe not something like a "real" group of death, but I think there are significant differences in power inside pot 3. Getting Thailand (#28 in FIFA rankings) is very different than getting South Korea or China, not only because of their rankings (#14 and #15 respectively), but also because I've recently seen them both at AFC Asian Cup and Asian Games and they are respectable teams, well able to cause some upsets (not the kind of "beating USA" upsets: they both played USA quite recently and badly lost; but anyway they could maybe possibly upset some of the weakest pot 2 teams). Italy (#17) is also a more than decent team, for being in pot 3. Even if you look at pot 4, there is probably a quite big difference between picking Jamaica or, say, Nigeria (although we don't even know yet if Nigeria will qualify). So, even without a veritable "group of death", there could be at least one group that could reveal a quite tough nut to crack.
I wouldn't put it past FIFA to finagle yet another USA-Sweden group game. Those two teams have been drawn together in the last 4 WC.
True, but it was only in 2015 that another USA-SWE was really a surprise... Getting something that's a 1/4 chance three times in a row isn't so outlandish. Getting another 1/6 chance tacked on top of that is a bit more eyebrow-raising. The draw has been growing noticeably more transparent over the past two cycles, though; since it's supposed to be random aside from confed mixing limitations, another USA-SWE would fly in the face of that. There's no financial or competitive advantage to always having a USA-SWE game in the groups, so there really shouldn't be any reason FIFA would "keep fixing the draw".
That's definitely a fair point - even though there's unlikely to be a GoD this tournament, there can certainly be a noticeable scale of strength. For example, I pointed out in a different thread that having Thailand and Jamaica in the same group would likely make that the Group of Life, since it would be entirely reasonable to think neither of those teams should be in the top 16, but if they're in the same group, one will likely get a win and get into the R16 as one of the "better" 3rd-place teams. For example, the "toughest" possible group based on ranks would be USA-NED-KOR/CHN-ARG/NGA/CHI (toss-ups in the latter two spots); definitely not a Group of Death since none of the toss-up teams are regulars in the knock-out stages anyway. Conversely, the "easiest" possible group would be AUS-NOR-THA-JAM/ALG/MAL/ZAM, which looks like a Group of Life for THA, even if they don't get a result from AUS or NOR. (Interestingly, swap AUS for FRA and it's still a perfectly legal group, and would fit the pattern of hosts often getting a surprisingly easy group). And one sadder note about the FIFA ranking, or any rankings that don't see lower-level teams mix groups a lot: I'd bet on ARG/NGA/CHI over THA four times out of five. THA just benefits from having a lot of stronger nations in its confed, letting points bleed down a bit. Having teams at these levels play more inter-confed matches between big tournaments is a necessity if pure ranking is going to be used more for seeding from here on out.
I generally agree with you about this one, although it has to be noticed that Thailand brought Australia to extra-time in the semifinal of this year's AFC Asian Cup and they only gave up at penalty shootout. Yes, they had arrived there in the first place because they had been drawn in a "Group of Life" made of China, Philippines and Jordan, and they anyway squarely lost third-place match vs China by 1-3, but I'd say Thailand anyway showed some kind of development in the last years. Probably not enough yet to beat the minions from other confederations, but they showed that they can once in a while get a draw vs a top 10 team from their same confederation.
I mean, that's part of the reason I said they have points bleeding down from the stronger teams in AFC. Even their loss against China would have probably given them some points, I believe. That said, their draw to Australia is more the exception that proves the rule - AUS were in the middle of a seriously slumping spring at the time, i.e. performing well under what their rating suggested. (They had drawn and lost to Portugal a month before, remember!) So since AUS was slumping at the time, you really can't read too much into Thailand's draw as a signal of their own strength. Put another way: if Thailand play enough games against strong teams, their rating slowly go up unless the badly drop every result. Nations like ARG, CHI, and NGA don't play strong teams nearly as often, (there's only one Top 25 nation in the 60+ nations between their two confeds,) so they don't get points bleed like that (especially since BRA doesn't bring many points back to C'BOL in the first place). As such, they're ranked lower than Thailand even though they're probably stronger teams than Thailand is (or at least more comparable than the rankings suggest). To be fair, Thailand also play more games in general, (something else C'BOL and CAF are bad at organizing,) and are thus also racking up points against weaker AFC competition too.
agreed, and if you look at the last 3 major woso tournaments, the winners all came out of the toughest groups(or the aptly named 'group of death'); US at the 2015 WC, Germany at 2016 Olympics, Netherlands at 2017 Euro. the trend seems to be playing tougher teams in group play will make them stronger for the playoff bouts but at the same time, these FIFA ratings are a bit of a travesty to me; the US might be the best in the world, but it's #1 ranking is in part cuz their coach, Jill Ellis, takes no chances, she keeps starting the same players over & over again no matter how weak the opponent is, as compared to Germany who had a sort of experimental squad in their last game & got only a tie vs Spain. England looked better with it's B team over the last two games(winners over Austria, 3-0) than it's A squad(lost vs Sweden). Spain hasn't lost a game in over an year. They should be way higher ranked, but cause of a weak Euro qualifer group, they are still only #12 in a way, Wiegmann doesn't change her lineup too much, but then do to their relatively smaller population, you cant make the comparison with the US of the way higher amount of players the latter has so to it's size & woso popularity. But in way it's a tragedy(in the US) because so many of our strong players retire before their prime is up since Ellis don't want to pick them for her NT
Why in the world would you be experimenting less than a year before the world cup if you know you have a good squad? You experiment when A) you're in a rebuilding phase, or B) no big tournament is near. Your recency bias is also showing quite a bit; it's clear you already forgot the massive amount of turnover in the US squad that happened starting right after the '15 WWC (when the US had a lot of retirements) and after the '16 OGs (after the US had its first-ever exit before medal games). In fact, the US squad was in flux even well into 2017, after the poor showings in the summer friendly tournaments. The squad has only been "settled" just in 2018. (Also, don't forget that Spain is a team on the rise, so even if Germany wasn't experimenting, getting drawn by Spain isn't a huge surprise. Remember that it was Spain who first broke Germany's EURO+Euro qualifying win streak with a draw in Spain a cycle or two ago!)
Germany's new coach hasn't even taken over her team yet. the interim coach has brought in a bunch new players, debuting 3 of them in the last few games, England & France moved up several of their u20 players into their senior squads, over this last week. In comparison, the one debut for Ellis was Emily Fox, who played a whole 6 min. at the last u20 WC(makes you wonder if Ellis is on the same wave length with the youth coaches). Not sure if Colaprico was a debut too, but at 25, it seems like she's playing been playing ball for quite a while(or at least in the NT training camps)
Was that supposed to answer or refute what I said? Because it doesn't do either in any way. You didn't give any reason why a strong team would *want* to experiment this close to a tournament, and you verified my point that Germany is a team in transition. (That was Colaprico's second cap ever, btw)
guessing your in the if it ain't broke, don't fix it mindset And perhaps your right considering the US is #1, but I feel a team needs to continuesly progress no matter how high it is. After SBC, England, France & Germany knew they need better players to beat the US, & that's what their currently looking for, especially after the u20 WC, Just look at the difference, here's the lineups at SBC for EN & US United States vs. England - 8 March 2018 - Women Soccerway now here is the starting lineup for the US vs #19, Scotland, barely a suble of a change as vet, Morgan, takes over vet Rapino's spot at left to make room so that even older vet, Lloyd can start. The two newbies, Fox & Colaprico, sub each other out(wow, how nice of Ellis!) Scotland vs. United States - 13 November 2018 - Women Soccerway now take a look at England's lineup vs #20 Austria from last week, & , there's not only 9 new changes in the starting lineup, but several subs made their debut as well Austria vs. England - 8 November 2018 - Women Soccerway
SiberianThunder@ in their very strong showing last week over #17 Italy, Germany used 8 different starters from the ones used in the 0-1 loss vs the US at SBC Germany vs. Italy - 10 November 2018 - Women Soccerway
New rankings released. https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/news/draw-pots-confirmed-by-latest-women-s-ranking
Jamaica avoids being the lowest ranked team to ever qualify for a Women's World Cup by moving up to #53. Ivory Coast will continue to hold the record for another 4 years at #64 in 2015.
Well, that depends - they may not be the lowest-ranked team to participate in the WWC, but the question is what was Ivory Coast's rank when they qualified? X-D (I know, it's probably easy to look up, but I'm only seeing this post in what was meant to be a two-minute check on BigSoccer since I have to leave for dinner now.)
(Dust off... ) Ok. Ok... O-kay (big breath). SheBelieves Cup. Algarve Cup. Cyprus Cup. Australian Cup of Nations. And... dozens other minor cups, in Europe (Aphrodite Cup, Istria Cup) and around the world (Turkish Women's Cup). And... random friendlies, some of them involving teams going to play at the WWC (Jamaica-Chile, for instance). One can't say that this last FIFA window wasn't very busy. Now (I try -_-")... who wants to calculate which kind of earthquakes are going to happen in FIFA women's rankings, after this batch of matches, in the perspective of the upcoming update of 29th of March? I know, I know, too many matches, titanic work. At least a rough idea of the most relevant changes that are likely to happen?
Ironically, Nigeria vs Thailand just happened at Cyprus Cup and it looks like you were right at least about this one, @SiberianThunderT, since the final score was 3-0 for the African team.