FIFA World Ranking

Discussion in 'Women's International' started by jonny63, Mar 17, 2006.

  1. JanBalk

    JanBalk Member+

    Jun 9, 2004
    Isn't that the same in the whole of Europe? outside those three it nice to win but the overriding importanceis to build and/or test your team for those three.
     
  2. Ethan Frank

    Ethan Frank Member+

    Chelsea
    United States
    Jun 11, 2019
    They tied with Sweden for first in the 2018 Algarve. The 2017 Algarve (admittedly haven't looked it up) was before the Euros. Unless you're also judging Spain for their 3-0 loss to Poland, don't look too much into that Poland Algarve Cup match as that was a completely second string team. I'm really getting tired of people claiming England wasn't a top team that the Dutch didn't upset in their EURO championship run. (Canada is also ranked notably higher, but I admit that didn't really feel like an upset.) Sure, England was missing Jill Scott in that match, but they were dominant throughout that tournament up until they met the Dutch and Groenen in the form of her life. I don't like this revisionist history that the English weren't heavily favored there. Agree to disagree though.
     
  3. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    I never said they didn't. I said that their performances were volatile - i.e. not consistent at all. Placing 5th, then 1st, then 11th, is very volatile. I said that to counter the earlier argument that having longer times to train together should translate well into performances.

    Your point?

    Yes to both. As I've said elsewhere, a team is both its highs and its lows - you can't and won't have you best XI available for every single match, and your best XI won't always play their best.

    England might have been highly ranked, but they were hardly "dominant throughout that tournament". They schooled Scotland, but got a slumping Spain in their second match and barely beat the lowest-ranked squad, Portugal, in the final group stage match, with none of the matches looking like the best version of England they could be. IDK what the feelings were on the ground before the semifinal, but here on BS it was billed as a fairly even match going into it - because the Netherlands were getting HFA, because they were making good use of it by actually playing attractive soccer in their first four matches, and particularly because the Netherlands had beaten Sweden looking much better than the English did in their match against France. (The poll in that match thread was 8-10 in slight favor of England.)
     
  4. Ethan Frank

    Ethan Frank Member+

    Chelsea
    United States
    Jun 11, 2019
    I slightly disagree here. That second half against Denmark in the group stages was incredibly rough, and that win against Belgium was mainly entertaining to me thanks to individual brilliance from Groenen and Martens. Norway was attractive football, but everybody in the group beat Norway. I didn't think the Dutch really hit their stride until Sweden, and Sweden still created a couple great chances. Unlike the Dutch though, they couldn't finish. Again, we'll just disagree here.

    My point? It's pretty obvious to me. The Dutch weren't considered a serious contender anywhere before the 2017 Euros. I'm assuming whatever point hotjam2 was making was with regards to Euros and post-Euros.

    The 2019 Algarve was a very peculiar tournament structure that lended itself to volatile results in my opinion with just two group stage matches. The Dutch had their best XI available; Wiegman just chose not to play them for any significant portion of the Poland match. Spain looks to be a bit of a bogey team for the Dutch, and a lot of teams have those. However, it's very much fair to be critical of them there.
     
  5. Cliveworshipper

    Cliveworshipper Member+

    Dec 3, 2006
    It’s hard to get too worked up about the rankings now. They will be used for seeding in the Olympics. Not very much will change in the seeds of the top teams that qualify.
    ( only uefa and Japan so far)

    The next time it will matter at all is for the number of teams in each confederation, and in the pools for the cup that is FOUR YEARS away. Current results won’t matter a lot by then.
     
  6. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    My current estimate of performance ratings (since 1/1/2018) for the 16 teams which made the knockout rounds:

    USA 2170(!!) (pre-World Cup official rating 2101)
    Germany 2056 (2072)
    France 2046 (2043)
    Netherlands 2028 (1967)
    Sweden 2014 (1962)
    England 2005 (2049)
    Japan 1939 (1991)
    Canada 1933 (2006)
    Norway 1929 (1915)
    Spain 1928 (1913)
    Australia 1914 (2003)
    Brazil 1906 (1944)
    Italy 1900 (1868)
    China 1824 (1866)
    Nigeria 1804* (1599)
    Cameroon 1771* (1499)

    USA's 1-1/2 year performance rating approaches the 2200 level which only they & Germany have breathed in the last 15-20 years.

    * For Nigeria and Cameroon, I used the performance ratings of matches against only non-African teams because of the well-known problem of rating regions like Africa where the teams rarely play teams outside their confederation.

    The performance ratings for the top teams are, for the most part, quite similar to SiberianThunderT's back-of-the-envelope ratings. Biggest variation among the top 6 is England.

    The discrepancy with England may be largely explained by the last friendlies played by England before the World Cup, which SiberianThuderT said wasn't included in the estimate. If I exclude those matches as well (losses to Canada and New Zealand, wins over Spain and Denmark, all played at home), then I get a performance rating of about 2030.

    ***
    I think the ratings matter even with the tournament over (and I deliberately use the word "ratings" as opposed to "rankings"). Properly used, the ratings help us evaluate how a team is doing in its friendlies (by giving us some objective measure of the strength of opposition). And I think it's a way of giving respect to teams that have reached a certain level of excellence. It burned me up to see some journalists dismissing teams like Italy before the World Cup, saying simply there was a big dropoff once you get past the top 10 or 12 teams. I admit I didn't know Italy well enough either (fortunately a few people tipped me off to Barbara Bonansea) but it wouldn't occur to me to make the mistake of completely disrespecting a team with a rating above 1850 the way these other people did who had no idea what they were talking about.


    ***
    completely a tangent - but seeing Italy at 1900 in the performance ratings makes me think of the beautiful, unique (and epic-length) movie 1900 (Novocento) by the great director Bernardo Bertolucci.
     
  7. Cliveworshipper

    Cliveworshipper Member+

    Dec 3, 2006
    #1232 Cliveworshipper, Jul 8, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2019
    I’m not sure it is meaningful to talk about 15-20 years.

    The first ranking came out on the last day of 2002 and included results back to about 1999. In March 2005, both the M factor (match importance) and the K factor (rate of change) were increased to make the results be most significant for a four year ranking cycle. Also shortly after, the M factor was doubled for top 10 teams playing each other.

    the rankings had been changing too slowly.

    So at most we are talking 14 years where the rankings have any meaning on a scale comparable to the present rankings. Probably going back to the 2007 WWC is about all we can really discuss, as this was the first year of matches with an M factor of 4.and a K factor of 15
     
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  8. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    Actually, all results back to the first officially recognized match are included. The word "included" is a bit awkward to use, though, since once a result is put into the rankings, it's not "stored" in any direct way. A game's effect on any team's rating will last for a while, but the game itself is instantly forgotten and its effect phases out over time as more and more games are played. For teams that play 10+ games per year, it's probably as recently as 2013 or so that the effect of old games is lost entirely.

    It's certainly interesting to consider how modern ratings compare to historical rating. The two things that you always have to consider is that A) the ratings are (generally) conservative in that total points between teams are (generally) never gained or lost, and B) the same rating at two different times could mean two different things depending on the distribution of ratings.
     
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  9. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Performance ratings during the World Cup itself of the teams which made it at least to the Round of 16 (calculated using opponents' official ratings):

    USA 2340! (7 matches played)
    Netherlands 2138 (7)
    Sweden 2075 (7)
    England 2032 (7)
    France 2010 (5)
    Germany 1999 (5)
    Italy 1943 (5)
    Norway 1939 (5)
    Brazil 1930 (4)
    Australia 1907 (4)
    Canada 1852 (4)
    Nigeria 1845 (4)
    Spain 1831 (4)
    Cameroon 1795 (4)
    Japan 1784 (4)
    China 1755 (4)

    USA's performance rating an astronomical 2340 by my quick estimate. Of course this is what happens when you have a small sample of 7 matches against some strong opponents and win all your games.

    World Cup performance ratings using pre-World Cup performance ratings (from 1/1/2018):

    USA 2340 (7 matches played)
    Netherlands 2131 (7)
    Sweden 2057 (7)
    England 2037 (7)
    Germany 2034 (5)
    France 1983 (5)
    Norway 1939 (5)
    Brazil 1918 (4)
    Italy 1907 (5)
    Australia 1901 (4)
    Nigeria 1864 (4)
    Spain 1845 (4)
    Canada 1841 (4)
    China 1802 (4)
    Japan 1793 (4)
    Cameroon 1763 (4)

    I used special pre-Cup performance ratings for Nigeria and South Africa using only matches with non-African nations
     
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  10. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Good point but I don't think it affects what I'm saying much but we can restrict it to 14 years. (I said 15 to 20. Big deal) By any measure there have been two dominant teams in this time period, US and Germany, and it shows in that only these teams gotten close to 2200 or surpassed it.

    You were expected to comment on Bertolucci and 1900 anyway. You missed your cue :)
     
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  11. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    What can we make of the performance ratings during the World Cup itself? As you'd expect, the top four teams are the ones which made the medal matches. France and Germany are close behind although they missed out on the semi-finals.

    • If you're in the top six, I'd be encouraged by that. Of course France and Germany are going to be disappointed; they have high expectations and they didn't meet them and have to seriously ask how to get back on the medal stand (or in France's case, get on it in the first place). But they're clearly in the mix. They have the players. They have the talent. They're doing a lot of things right. You'll notice that after those six, there's a bit of separation (50 points or so) to the next group including Italy/Brazil/Australia/Norway. It's good to know you're still in the top tier above the others. (That goes for England, too, who are disappointed to finish fourth, going backward compared to 2015)

    • Australia, Brazil, and especially Canada - I'd be concerned. Instead of climbing towards the top, they're moving in the wrong direction.

    • More proof that the best African sides are seriously underrated by the rating/ranking system, which is no surprise to anybody. It 's not a conspiracy; it's not anyone's fault unless it's the African federations for not supporting their programs so they can play more matches outside their confederation. But it's amazing how much talent is there given the lack of that support. It's a big signal to European and American clubs to keep recruiting African players in their search for talent, which will in turn only improve these players and the countries they're from

    • Norway! Reversing their decline?! Julie Foudy & Co. may yet find themselves having recurring nightmares about that caterpillar thingy.

    • Italy. Thumbs up!

    • Spain and Japan probably need a longer discussion which I won't embark on. Should they be alarmed? Are these warning bells going off? Or just a predictable hiccup as they bring up younger players and build for the future?
     
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  12. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    I know you mentioned earlier that performance rankings during the WWC itself are always going to be a bit iffy since it's such a small sample size. So I don't think either team has much to worry about, though if we were to make a comparison I think Japan should be slightly more concerned since they've had much more KO experience than Spain does and, maybe for that reason alone, might wonder a bit more why they couldn't beat England or Netherlands.

    I really like the performance ratings heading into a tournament, since they're more responsive to current form than the official ratings are while still being fairly robust; not sure how predictive they are exiting a tournament since that's usually when most teams "hit the reset button".

    I've also always been a bit iffy on the notion that they will be sensitive, though, to what time period used to train them. That is, what's the best compromise between looking for current form, general player pool, and total number of games? This is, of course, a question every rating system faces, but since that's a choice to make every time you do performances ratings, it feels a little more variable to me than, say, the choice of K, M, c, and the actual result (all one-time choices) are for the official ratings.
     
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  13. Is there a player rating system for team players?
     
  14. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There are. I don't know much about them but one place to start for the women's game is Chris Henderson and All White Kit. Link: www.allwhitekit.com
     
  15. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    It depends on who you ask and how you define "system". Most player rating lists are subjective since soccer is a relatively stats-poor sport and the stats that are taken don't often translate to how good a player is, particularly with comparing between positions. You have the AWK ratings mentioned above, and the FIFA video games have their own system, but we're not talking about systems that are as trusted as those you find in basketball, hockey, and especially baseball. It's really hard to rate performances individually like you can team results since the latter is easier to do objectively. (Not that it's easy - hence the different team rating systems out there and all the subjective "power rankings" that people love to talk about.)
     
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  16. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I took a preliminary look at how predictive the performance ratings were and some of the results were pretty encouraging. For instance, in 25 matches where the performance rating differential was between 1 and 150 points:

    • the average (performance) rating difference was 60 points
    • the average expected result (or expected win percentage) was (.585)
    • the actual average result was (.584)


    Of course, you can't expect it to always turn out as close as that, but on the whole the results look pretty good.

    (note: to calculate the result I used the decimal scores between 0 and 1 that FIFA uses to calculate the rankings. For example, a 1-0 win counts as .85 points to the winner / .15 to the loser. A 2-0 win counts as .92 points to winner / .08 to loser. And again, the additional caveat is for Nigeria I used only matches against non-African teams in estimating their performance rating since 1/1/2018. Nigeria played enough matches against non-African teams, I felt, to compile a reasonable rating which was more likely to be accurate than calculations using ratings of African teams which are likely far less accurate than they are for European, Asian, and CONCACAF teams)

    (additional note: performance ratings for matches from 1/1/2018 to the start of the World Cup, a span of about 1-1/2 years)
     
  17. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    Oh, yeah I know how the performance ratings work! I follow your posts a lot, including your previous "how predictive are they?" series of posts. I was just trying to say with the part you bolded that the performance ratings are more susceptible to "missing the mark" when teams start restructuring than a longer-term rating system would. (Of course, it depends - again - on how long your training period is.)
     
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  18. Cliveworshipper

    Cliveworshipper Member+

    Dec 3, 2006

    I don’t think the period between when the teams qualify and the group pools are constructed, and the cup starts is all that predictive.

    There is no pressure to increase rankings or to have the presumptive first team start every match. It’s when the more inexperienced players get time, as happened early in the year this year with the USA.
     
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  19. Cliveworshipper

    Cliveworshipper Member+

    Dec 3, 2006
    Actually, at the highest levels, soccer is a pretty rich statistical environment. The average person doesn’t see much of soccer alalytics because it is closely guarded and a pay per view system.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...every-touch-pass-and-tackle-in-the-world-cup/
     
  20. Feyenoord just signed a deal with a company called SciSports for scouring purposes.They have the data of about 90,000 players in their database for analysis for clubs.

    Use google translate for the article. https://www.ad.nl/nederlands-voetbal/scisports-gaat-scouting-feyenoord-helpen~aed700db/
    Guess it could beused for rating purposes, but I doubt they're gonna give insight in that or the data they use.
     
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  21. Ethan Frank

    Ethan Frank Member+

    Chelsea
    United States
    Jun 11, 2019
    True, but I think rating based on stats is often still subjective. I also think systems like InStat fail to take into account the context of certain situations (i.e. when a player loses a ball more due to the incoming pass putting him or her under huge pressure or Emily Sonnett leaving De Vanna with acres of space). The stats on their own can still be useful though, especially the team ones.
     
  22. lil_one

    lil_one Member+

    Nov 26, 2013
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    AWK mentioned above uses inStat. Another is Opta, but I think you have to pay to use their stats.
     
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  23. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    My computer graphic skills are very poor but I'm going to post a couple graphs to illustrate my findings in the World Cup, showing how predictive the ratings were. If the ratings worked perfectly, they would follow the Elo scale (in orange). As the rating differentials go up, the higher the win percentage, or in this case, the "decimal score", the game score translated into a decimal between 0 and 1 according to the table FIFA uses to calculate the new ratings.

    (What I did was group games by the difference in ratings, for example games with rating differences between 25 and 175 points and took the average expected results and the average actual results and graphed it. For these two graphs I generally went up by 50 points, so the next range of games was between 75 and 225 points)

    Using the FIFA ratings on their own, as is, the correlation doesn't look very good. After 175 points, the results dip instead of going up and they stay well below the Elo scale until after rating differentials of 350 points.

    World Cup graph by FIFA rating differential.jpg

    The graph using performance ratings, however, is much better.

    World Cup graph by Perf rating differential.jpg

    This is still based on official FIFA ratings, but uses estimates of performance ratings in a more recent time period; in this case from January 1 2018 (as I've been doing) up to the start of the World Cup.

    The other key change is for Nigeria (and I think South Africa), I used a specially calculated performance rating which only used matches with non-African opponents (because of the well-known problem with the ratings of African teams; they don't play outside their confederation often enough to calibrate their ratings with the rest of the world.)

    With these modifications, the results seem rather well-correlated to the Elo scale (the predicted results, in other words)
     
  24. hotjam2

    hotjam2 Member+

    Nov 23, 2012
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    thanks for the link(you need to ask the author to join BS, lol). His assessment of Germany was spot on, Very little interest on BS of the #2 Germans(now that our cave dweller, flew the coop), but coach MVT used so many different tactics within the game itself, hoping to confuse any scouts. Unfotunately she went back to the Jorgie horror show vs Sweden. One thing I would beg to differ, while Gwinn got lauded as best youth player, it was the player she replaced/starterd over, Hendrich(by far GE's most athletic) that could of saved the day.

    Can't find the link now(it was in an foreign language anyway). but here was how the leagues stood up in how many competed at the WC(both domestic & internationals)

    1. NWSL(US).............73 players total
    2.WSL(England).........57
    3.Primera(Spain)........51
    4. FemineF(France)....50
    5, Bundesliga(GE)......37
    6. Dam.(Sweden).......24

    take it with a grain of salt; both Sweden & England don't have strong(EN) leagues(yet did so well). Bundesliga would of been way hire if only Austria & the Swiss made it to the WC(as almost their entire NT's play for that league)

    but American dominance also shows that several current college players were here(almost all of Jamaica's, Thai's Nild, of the ones i know)

    plus US born or raised like Riley(NZ) Bardsley(EN) Beckie(CA)Johnson(CAM)
     
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  25. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    Curious; how much of the "dip" in the first graph is because of the undervaluing of CAF sides? That is, if you re-did the top graph be either ignoring all CAF-involved games or by substituting the adjusted performance rating into the otherwise-official-ratings analysis, how much of that dip disappears?
     
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