Ranked the teams with points

If you are looking for a mathematical formulas, don't worry. The best methodology and formula belongs to ELO. All they need to work on a bit is to avoid the "garbage in, garbage out" issue in terms of the results that go into their rankings. It is not really their fault, but there are games reported as "international A games" that aren't really remotely anything of the sort. The CHAN tournament among local players in Africa, the so-called East Asian championships, and some other such tournaments, should simply not be reported as international A matches.

If the above problem I allude to is fixed, no mathematical formula is going to be as sensible as ELO's. The other problem that exists that affects primarily the ranking of CAF teams is actually not a problem with any ranking, but the fact that none of CAF's teams are able to show the kind of consistency and record that keeps a good ranking. Everywhere else, good teams are able to maintain a relatively good record within their own confederation over the years and (overall) do relatively well in their friendlies against teams from other confederations. Their losses will be aberrations and might be explained by other factors. In CAF, that is often not the case. Nigeria fails to even qualify to 2 successive AFCON tournaments. Morocco, whose fans have begun annoying me greatly, produced excellent results in World cup qualifying but nonetheless has suffered 5 losses in 2017 alone (3 in competitive games against fellow CAF teams, namely losing to DR Congo and Egypt in the 2017 AFCON and to Cameroon in the 2019 ACON qualifiers). This same Morocco can be thankful their "bench" beat South Korea in a friendly; otherwise except for a win overly lowly Canada, since 2014 they have otherwise lost to practically every team outside of CAF they have faced, including losing to Russia, to Uruguay, Finland, Holland and only drawing Qatar and Albania!

 

mathematical ranking systems never work. the only way is a subjective ranking by unbiased and intelligent and knowledgeable fans. because no fan is going to have enough knowledge about all 200 teams, or even all 32 teams, ranking so many teams is a futile task. but what we could do is grade each team, for example A+, A, A-, B+, etc... i believe IM has done this in the recent past. and in case 2 teams are tied, we can then analyze further and compare them head to head.. but again.. ranking is not only about head to head... it is about how you rank as compared to all teams. so we could have one team that is more likely to beat another team, but that team is also more likely to lose to more teams.

 

Unfortunately, since finding a collection of unbiased, knowledgeable fans is basically impossible, in practice mathematical formulas should work better than subjective ones based on 'finger-in-the-wind' opinions (provided that the formula isn't bonkers like the one that started-off this thread).

Just look at Ballon d'Or voting: can't even get #1 right! It wouldn't be that difficult to develop a formula that yields a better ranking than Sergio Ramos' top 3.

 

Ronaldo first, Messi second, and Modric third.

 

The big issue

The big issue with that kind of system is that they don't take into account the strength of the opponents. Beating Gibraltar or San Marino is valued the same as beating Brazil or Germany.

As told by Iranian Monitor, Elo ratings take this in consideration and will value the result for a team according to the value of its opponent. For what it's worth Elo ratings is the standard system to value players in chess competition, and a similar system is now used in Women's FIFA rankings.

 

The Elo ranking has also been proven to be good at predicting outcome of matches which also lends credence to it.

 

Minor quibble:
How did you count Nigeria's game vs Algeria? They beat Algeria, but lost points because they played Shehu who was suspended for the match.