FIFA World Ranking

They couldn't wait three more days and include the Asia Cup final match?

Edit: The last group game and the semis don't seem to count, either.

 

That's weird. It wasn't like that the last time I looked...FIFA must be doing something funny with the Asia Cup updates (I guess losing to Japan wasn't clever for ranking points). I think that may mean DPRK go past us again when they process the China-DPRK semi

Well North Korea lost a point for 'only' beating Myanmar 2-0.

 

No, no changes, those movers were there when the ranking came out; I'm pretty sure the above statement means who was in the top ten didn't change, not that they remained static.

 

Yeah, I think so too, I think they decided to count Japan - DPRK (so Japan got +21 pts and DPRK -21 pts). Because I updated the Norwegian Wikipedia on Friday, and the only changes from that Friday list was those 21 points.

England -1 wasn't really a change, they just went from shared 8th to 9th (and similarly DPRK went from shared 5th to 6th before that last group game)

 

You know - I actually though that when the May rankings were released they were the other way around.

J

 

Well now; I was expecting the loss to Mexico combined with all the lackluster friendlies would have dropped USA out of first, so I'm surprised but happy. Likewise, though, I'm shocked Mexico didn't move up any position....

 

FIFA's women's ranking uses a different system from the men's ranking - and generally, it's more accurate than the men's in terms of reflecting how strong the teams actually are.

However - there is one huge problem with the recent rankings - If you look at the provisional ranking that Iraq has for their 3 matches in the recent Women's Arabian Cup - they have 975 points, compared to Lebanon's 954 points. This despite the fact that one of the results at the tournament was Lebanon 9-0 Iraq. Even if we discount this match (as neither teams is fully ranked), we can look at the 2 matches each team played against ranked teams (Egypt and Jordan)

Egypt 15-0 Iraq, Egypt 5-1 Lebanon
Jordan 20-0 Iraq, Jordan 3-1 Lebanon

How does losing by a combined 35 goals get you above a team who lost by only 6 - to the same 2 teams?

Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. They also have Papua New Guinea above South Africa and Equatorial Guinea - this is the same PNG team who recently lost 11-0 in the Oceania Championship FINAL to New Zealand.

Also, Tanzania, who performed well at the recent African Championship, are below Maldives - who have drawn 1 and lost 14 of their 15 official internationals.

Just read this list of results and tell me seriously that Maldives deserve to be above a team who qualified for and played in the African finals:

Maldives results:
0-17 v Myanmar
0-14 v Vietnam
0-6 v Uzbekistan
0-4 v Hong Kong
0-6 v Singapore
0-5 v Vietnam
0-9 v Thailand
0-7 v Bahrain
1-1 v Bahrain (WOW!)
0-4 v Palestine
0-5 v Uzbekistan
0-9 v Jordan
0-2 v Kyrgyzstan
0-2 v Sri Lanka
0-3 v Sri Lanka

That's right - 1 goal for, 94 against. Clearly more deserving of ranking points than Tanzania.


I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until they change it.

Complete pile of ****

 

The ranking is pretty good for the top teams....

BUT:

Tanzania still below Maldives (There will never be anyone who can possibly justify this, I'm sure it has to be a mistake)

Papua New Guinea still above World Cup qualifiers Equatorial Guinea, despite losing 11-0 to New Zealand...

Macedonia still 19 places behind Luxembourg, even though they just showed they are better by beating them 5-1...

Also, if you look at United Arab Emnirate's provisional ranking - if they maintain this for 2 more matches, until they can be included in the main ranking (after 5 matches), they would be in 26th place! Ahead of African champions Nigeria....... Something very wrong.

Where would I direct an e-mail to complain about this ranking? Should I bother? Probably not.

 

Equatorial Guinea also won a lot of their recent matches against much better opposition, and, unlike Papua New Guinea, did NOT fail to qualify for the World Cup. They also won the African Championship in 2008. Papua New Guinea's most recent success was the Pacific Games title in 2007.

In the last 3 years:
Papua New Guinea were inactive from March 2008 until September 2010. They then won 4 matches v Tonga (67), Fiji (81), Solomon Islands (94) and Cook Islands (101).

In the same period - Equatorial Guinea have reched the final of the 2010 African Championship, with victories over Ghana (49), South Africa (58), Algeria (78) and a draw with Cameroon (66), after also beating Namibia (114) in qualifying (so, 4 wins and a draw already). At the end of 2008, they also won the African Championship, beating Nigeria (27), South Africa (58), Cameroon (66), Mali (92) and Congo (unranked).

As far as defeats are concerned, in this period, Papua New Guinea have lost twice only - both to New Zealand (24). However, Equatorial Guinea have only lost once - against Nigeria (27).

Now whose record looks better?

In the last 4 years, Macedonia have won 6 and drawn 3 matches. Luxembourg have won only 3, and drawn 1, against similar-level opponents. Even before the qualification, Macedonia had won 4 and drawn 2, Luxembourg had won 2 and drawn 1. So, there has been time to reflect Macedonia's superiority over Luxembourg. FIFA's ranking has just failed to show it.

But, after they play 2 more matches, this ranking (with the same or similar points) will be official - if UAE have similar results to what they did in their first 3 matches (quite likely) - then this provisional ranking will become their official ranking, and this will increase the inaccuracy of the ranking even more.

They only have an inaccurate ranking because the formula doesn't work properly. In this case, it spreads through the rest of the ranking and makes even more teams' rankings inaccurate.

The ranking for the lower teams will only improve when they play teams from other confederations - which doesn't seem likely in the near future.
There's no error in the formula - the formula just isn't suitable for calculating a meaningful ranking for the majority of teams. Only those who play in World Cups (the Top 20 or so) have meaningful rankings.

A case in point were the 2 friendly matches in December between Jordan and Tunisia. Jordan, 161 points and 30 positions above Tunisia before the matches, drew 4-4 and lost 0-3 at home. These results were entirely expected if you know anything about women's international football. But if you use the FIFA rankings as a guideline, it would appear to be a shock. [Incidentally, if I hadn't e-mailed FIFA about these results, they would never have known that the matches were played and Tunisia wouldn't have got any ranking points for these matches]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - there are already many rankings that do a much better job than FIFA's. If enough people can see their flaws and complain, then they might change them. If we all just sit and accept that there is nothing wrong with them, they'll never change.

 

That would be an interesting project for someone.

From Wikipedia, FIFA's women's ranking seems like the ELO system.

# FIFA Women's World Rankings are based on every international match a team ever played, going back to 1971, the first FIFA-recognized women's international between France and the Netherlands. (The men's ranking system considers only matches in the last four years.)
# FIFA Women's World Rankings are implicitly weighted to emphasize recent results. (The men's results are explicitly weighted on a sliding scale.)

So, we can see that all matches played more than 4 years ago would no longer be included in the ranking. I think this might actually be an improvement.

 

Goodness me, no. Have you seen the men's FIFA ranking? Luxembourg hopped 75 places by beating Switzerland, for example. Cuba are ranked in the top six of CONCACAF despite not qualifying for a Hexagon or a CONCACAF quarter-final since 1981. Teams who play friendlies can not score as many points as teams who do not. Etc. Etc. Etc.

 

I was being hopeful...

Anyway, I think that most people with any knowledge of international football will not take FIFA's ranking as a tool to measure national team strength, more like just a fun thing that gets a lot of media attention.

 

It is a helpfull but rather (or in some case very) inexact way of measure national team strength.

 

I don't know the exact numbers for football but in chess where they use ELO, a new player starts out with a rating of 1500. For a game one can win or lose from 2-32 points depending on the strength of the opponent. The rating before you have played 30 games is provisional.

If you play a player with rating 400 points higher, if you win, you gain 32 points, if you lose, you lose 2 points.
If you play a player with rating 400 points lower, you can win 2 points but lose 32.
If you play a player of equal strength, you can win or lose 16 points.