unbelievable how this farce continues... https://www.socceramerica.com/publi...aign=17941&hashid=lyxQHYBEBTkM9AZY-5GEyGC9Iks
Such is the nature of a formulaic ranking system such as the one contrived by FIFA. Old games fall off and new games add on. Take it for what it is. An imperfect attempt at quantifying a very difficult ranking system. I doubt there can be a perfect system, just a least imperfect one for now.
Yep, I always look at eloratings.net for a good gauge of where we're at. And other countries too. Right now, though it hurts to say it, we're about 32nd. Put it another way, we are better than Panama and Honduras, not as good as Mexico and Costa Rica. Oh wait, never mind.
The weird thing is that FIFA uses the Elo system for its women's rankings, but keeps using its ridiculous system for men's national teams. Probably because there's some entrenched interest in keeping certain (European and South American) teams high in the rankings.
We're the 5th highest ranked team not going, after Chile, Wales, Netherlands & Slovakia. We'll be missed.
We moved up three spots for November, amazingly. We're #24 in the world right now. By next summer, we may be a Top 20 team just by not playing. And seeded in the NIT to be held somewhere in Fantasyland. PS: We surpassed Costa Rica too.
People realize that the USMNT played 19 games in 2017......................and only lost 2 of them. Right? I mean, I know we're all in a totally negative frame of mind, but those are actual facts. Except we're also up to #26 in the ELO rankings......................ahead of Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras. We are +7 in the ELO rankings in the last calendar year. And one can easily understand why when one looks at the actual results. I mean..............we won the Gold Cup in 2017. Lest we forget, we got a draw against Mexico at the Azteca in WCQing. We played Honduras home and away in WCQers. We trashed them at home 6-0, and drew on the road. We played Panama twice this year. We trashed them in the WCQer 4-0, and drew with them at the Gold Cup. We beat Costa Rica in the Gold Cup Semifinal, and then lost to them in a WCQer. So that's a wash in the formula. (Of course we trashed Costa Rica 4-0 in 2016 in Copa America.) We beat Jamaica several times this year, including the Gold Cup final. What does all of that tell you? Rankings are meaningless. But reviewing all of that may lead people away from "The Sky is Falling" panic that seems to be pervasive on the boards.
We.Failed.To.Qualify. From CONCACAF. Where4 out of 6 teams qualify or make the playoff to qualify. We failed to do either. that is all you need to know.
All I know is that everybody's happy to have Honduras and Panama in their groups. It wasn't like that with us. Oh no.
Right. Sure. Which is why rankings are meaningless. 2017 was actually a better year wins/losses-wise than 2015 or 2016. We played 19 games and only lost 2. We won the Gold Cup and had a bunch of good results. Hence, we went up in the rankings. It is what it is.
Again. That is why the "rankings" are redic. A Hungarian mathematician figured out how to game them. Teams like Switzerland listened to him and prospered. Italy was approached by him buy they ignored him and voila they end up much lower than they should be and get a tougher qualifying group than most. They have EFFECT but they are still isht.
No matter what the formula is, ELO or FIFA rankings, they're not a reflection of who the best teams are RIGHT NOW. We all get that. We go up in the formula because the disastrous results from the 2015 Gold Cup (at which we lost to Jamaica and Panama) are lessening in importance..........being replaced by the 2017 Gold Cup at which we didn't lose a game. We get it. Of course, an easy argument can be made the the United States is in fact the 2nd/3rd best team in CONCACAF (we're ranked very closely to CR in both rankings). Lest we forget, we won the Gold Cup and played Mexico/Costa Rica/Honduras/Panama/Jamaica nine times in 2017 between WCQers, Gold Cup, etc. We lost only one of those games. I know that every single one of those results has been purged from our memory banks to be replaced by the shocking result against T&T. However, 5-0 over Honduras and 4-0 over Panama in WCQers did actually happen. If you're taking emotion out of it, you can understand how a formula would tell you the USMNT went up in the rankings. That's all I'm saying.
Despite the general feelings of contempt toward the FIFA rankings (which I agree with), we should feel good about this. With FIFA's new system for seeding teams into one of four pots for determining the World Cup draw based on your FIFA ranking, it's critical for us to be in pot-2 for future World Cups. Being in pot 2 ensures that we'll only face one "powerhouse" team in our group, and all but guarantees two weaker teams for the other two spots in a group. When you look at the World Cup draw this year, there's no clear group of death like we've seen in all previous World Cups. The groups are much more equitable.
Yup.........................but since we're not going to be playing a meaningful FIFA game until 2019, we're about to plummet in the rankings. This is one of the reasons Canada can't pick itself up off the mat from a rankings perspective. They have the Gold Cup, and if they don't play well at the Gold Cup (which they rarely do), then they get put into a bad pot for WCQing. They're Curacao from a rankings perspective, even though we know they're not. [Curacao is actually ranked ahead of Canada right now.] We won't plummet to Canada depths due to our good results at the Gold Cup and WCQing in 2017 [As ironic as that is.] And lets not forget our good wins at the 2016 Copa America. But we'll probably drop below 40 or so, which is where a WC nation like Morocco is.
Good points. We'll really need to try to climb the rankings from 2019-2021(in both Gold Cups + WCQ + a possible future Copa America), because I think being in pot 2 will be critical to our odds/likelihood at advancing to the round of 16 in future World Cups, given the new format for the draw. If we can consistently become a "pot 2" type of team (and qualify for World Cups, of course), there's no reason why we shouldn't expect to consistently advance to the knockout rounds in World Cups going forward. Here's a question - if we host the 2026 World Cup and thus don't end up playing any qualification games during that cycle, will that cause our FIFA rankings to plummet? Russia's FIFA ranking seems artificially low to me.
Nearly half a year ago Canada played Curacao in a friendly in Canada. The Canucks prevailed 2-1, but they didn't look that much better than the islanders.
We have 867 FIFA Ranking points. If you move forward two years, with the third and fourth most recent years dropping out and the most recent two years weighted less, and you don't give us any new points for those two years, we will have 231 points then, which would be 131st in the current rankings. I'm not saying that will happen. We'll see how countries below us that qualified do in World Cup 2018. It probably will cause our FIFA Ranking to plummet, although it's impossible to know how the host would have done in qualifying if they played WCQs. October and November 2017 are Russia's worst FIFA Ranking months ever (the rankings started in 1993), and Brazil's worst year by far was in 2013 before hosting. Brazil's only months outside the top ten were from July 2012 through October 2013.
And we keep climbing in FIFA rankings! Latest projection has us at #24 (above Costa Rica), up yet another spot. If we win the May/June friendlies, by the time the World Cup starts, we may be a Top 20 team. http://www.football-rankings.info/2018/03/fifa-ranking-april-2018-final-preview.html#more
And based on our results since the start of 2017, one can understand why an emotionless formula would actually move us up the rankings. We've only lost two games since the start of 2017. One was against a well-ranked team in Costa Rica. Basically we've had one bad loss during that time, against T&T. In the real world that was devastating. In a rankings world all over the other positive results in 2017 overpower it. In the rankings world SINCE we were eliminated from the World Cup we've drawn with the #4 team in the world (the formula doesn't know it was a Portugal B team), the #41 team in the World, and beat the #30 team in the World in friendlies. All of those wins at the Gold Cup were FIFA "A" games. I know people have forgotten that we won the Gold Cup in 2017, as folks have wanted to flush all memory of 2017 down the drain, but it did actually happen. It does actually mean something. Actual result since the start of 2017 (click to expand).