FYI, The nations cup was not the only competitive matches that were considered for the rankings. Egypt dropped points to lower level African teams, and very rarely beat teams outside of the continent.
what the hell is wrong with some people if the USA was ranked in top 10 you'll be saying the rankings are great. the usa drops down to 26th the system is flawed wake up being best team in concacaf does not make a team a top 10 ranked team. then Italy should always be number 1 bc they are world cup champions. yes the rankings blow give a break usa is not a great team
We know were not the greatest team, but better then some ahead of us, did you actually read the posts?
The rankings are always severely messed up. We were in the top five a couple years ago. Not even the famed 'spazzos' would agree with that.
rankings have to be taken with a grain of salt, period. i think no matter what formula you use, it will always be a relative gauge of strength representing a quasi single table league format where many of the teams have never met and may not ever. Frankly, i couldnt care less what the US gets ranked but 26 sounds about right. It so competitive between 10 and 40 anyway that its not even useful predicting a $5 bet with your buddies.
In my opinion, one of the best ways of ranking teams is the AP and USA Today polls that NCAA uses for college basketball. Could something be set up like this internationally?
No, they're not, they're moronic. The AP poll is done by sports writers, mostly from the east coast who don't stay awake long enough to see any games west of the Big Ten, do you think European sportswriters would bother watching anything besides Euro matches if they were voting? The USA Today poll is done by coaches (or often by other people who they have voting for them), who are busy, well, coaching. Plus those polls reward teams for playing weak schedules, if you keep winning, regardless of who it is against, you will move up the rankings. Does anyone really believe Memphis is the best college bball team? lol. What would happen if they applied these rankings? would an Oceania or Asian team be No. 1 by playing no one? They ought to at least partially seed the WC (really seed it, not the horrible system they have been using) like the bball selection committee. Have a committee assign seeds based on things like strength of schedule, something like RPI, record, road record, injuries, how the team is playing of late and assign committee members to keep tabs on them
The best ranking algorithms are, in decreasing order, Pythagorean, ELO, and RPI, with Pythagorean actually being predictive. These are all superior to human voting for actually placing the teams in rank order according to their relative strengths. Sometimes people don't like what the computers tell them, so they think they can do better, so you get abominations like the BCS.
Actually, they're the 2nd best, behind KU. And the margin between Memphis and #3 UCLA is razor thin. http://www.kenpom.com/rate.php
Please.. Lets stick to the beautiful game not HGH/Chuckball. I believe FIFA should just ??????????????? Thats the problem; who knows what FIFA should do. The current system is so screwed up that you had USA in Pot D. Will there ever be an accurate solution?
Sure: Pythagorean is good. ELO isn't bad. For comparison, here are the Pythagorean rankings from the MLS 2007 regular season. "1" is perfect, and the numbers actually show relative strength, rather than "accumulated points over x years according to a complicated formula", like FIFA. Pythagorean Rankings: Houston Dynamo: 0.7853955375253551 Chivas USA: 0.7296551724137931 DC United: 0.6961154273029967 New England Revolution: 0.5844943820224718 Red Bull New York: 0.5 Kansas City Wizards: 0.48924855491329466 Los Angeles Galaxy: 0.4615952732644017 Colorado Rapids: 0.43961573650503194 Columbus Crew: 0.4289340101522843 Chicago Fire: 0.4257864421798848 FC Dallas: 0.4136960600375234 Real Salt Lake: 0.3341040462427745 Toronto FC: 0.20654329147389294 Just in case you are interested, here is a FIFA-style ranking from last year. Note how ridiculous they are compared to the Pythagorean results: points are awarded based on the rank of the teams involved at the time the game is played. You get really goofy results from it. FC Dallas: 12714.285714285714 Houston Dynamo: 12428.57142857143 Red Bull New York: 10874.999999999998 New England Revolution: 10321.42857142857 Chicago Fire: 8107.142857142855 Kansas City Wizards: 7303.571428571429 Chivas USA: 6660.714285714285 Columbus Crew: 5285.714285714285 Colorado Rapids: 4978.571428571428 Los Angeles Galaxy: 4900.000000000001 DC United: 3982.1428571428573 Real Salt Lake: 2353.5714285714284 Toronto FC: 553.5714285714284 To further illustrate how goofy the FIFA system is, here are the FIFA rankings of MLS clubs at the end of the regular season last year, taking into account games played over the 2006 & 2007 seasons. Note Toronto has the exact same number of points, because they've played fewer games. FIFA Rankings: DC United: 25270.714285714275 Houston Dynamo: 20187.142857142855 FC Dallas: 17741.428571428565 New England Revolution: 16664.28571428572 Kansas City Wizards: 11296.428571428567 Chicago Fire: 10437.142857142857 Colorado Rapids: 9502.142857142857 Red Bull New York: 8352.14285714286 Los Angeles Galaxy: 6900.000000000001 Chivas USA: 5580.000000000001 Columbus Crew: 5153.571428571428 Real Salt Lake: 2442.857142857142 Toronto FC: 553.5714285714284 (If you include 2006 results, it changes the initial ranking of each team in 2007, which actually changes the number of points earned in each match!) As a final point of comparison, here are the ELO rankings from MLS last year: Elo Rankings: Houston Dynamo: 1475.5483260887463 Chivas USA: 1474.2360918125498 DC United: 1467.8811373510714 Chicago Fire: 1430.5971937239808 New England Revolution: 1430.3180930177584 Los Angeles Galaxy: 1401.389057417446 Red Bull New York: 1391.0240767462255 FC Dallas: 1382.3205033878453 Columbus Crew: 1377.480223875462 Colorado Rapids: 1368.452281375882 Kansas City Wizards: 1368.1605256666503 Real Salt Lake: 1341.353396135993 Toronto FC: 1291.239093400389 It should be pretty clear that both ELO and Pythagorean make a lot more sense than the FIFA method.
The rankings are better now then they were previously, but there still not perfect. They reflect consistancy which is important because it shows the overall strength of the NT over a period of time, however they often disregard the Teams that only perform well within a short period time frame. NOt Perfect, but at the moment they are better then what they were; previously a team could rack up big points facing weak opponents and surpass teams that took on strong opposition and competed in major Turnaments. UEFA is where the competition and the points are, the south american Teams have NT players that exclusively play in EUROPE, and for the most part for the likes of Argentina and Brazil when they pull their NT together most of their players play for teams in UEFA. This is just the way it is, you have 50+ National Teams in Europe the competition is fierce, you have Euro Qualifiers, then the Turnament, WC qualifiers, and Championship League.... not to mention the TOP tier clubs in all of Football.