It is well known that the FIFA rankings are, well, let's not go there... This has led to some truly hilarious things, including, but not limited to,... 1) Switzerland being a seeded team at the World Cup last year, while the Netherlands (2010 finalists!) and Italy weren't. France was hilariously the lowest ranked European team at the World Cup. 2) Wales and Romania being in Pot 1 in Europe's World Cup qualifying draw, while France and Italy were in Pot 2. I'm sure there are many other examples from previous years and other tournaments. So, my question, is there anything that FIFA could do such that the FIFA rankings were actually an accurate reflection of teams' quality (or the lack thereof) and a reliable predictor of results?
Rather than starting out by weighting games by importance, put each game into a category by weighting. For each weighting, calculate each team's points divided by the number of points they would have earned if all of those games were wins against the top team in the world. Each team would have up to four weightings (1, 2.5, 3, and 4) with a category ignored if the team didn't play any games of that type. For example, if within the most recent year a team had played only friendlies (weighted 1), WCQs (weighted 2.5), and World Cup games (weighted 4), a team would have their value be: (Friendly point percentage + 2.5* WCQ point percentage + 4*World Cup percentage)/7.5 (1 + 2.5 + 4 = 7.5 so that's what you divide by) Then weight the four years and add them up. This would yield a maximum score of 2 if you beat the top team in the world in all your games, so all the values could be multiplied by the same constant to make the numbers larger. I might do this for some countries on my own.