How does this system work? How come Spain, Turkey, USA and Ireland are ahead of Germany? http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/index/0,2548,103687,00.html?articleid=103687
It's a mystery to me too. I remember a quote by Bruce Arena(USA nats coach) when latest rankings were released. something along the lines of its flattering, but doesn't mean much. I know that there are teams the USA wouldn't compete with consistently that are ranked lower. My .02!!
So using either ranking you want spain appears to have legitimately been better over the last few years than the other mentioned teams. Then for US, Turkey, Ireland, and Germany it depends on which ranking you like. Both rankings have pros and cons but taken together they imply that these 4 teams all are relatively equal in recent years success. Also it could be interpreted to mean that these four would be predicted to be in the round of 16 in a neutral site world cup but not in the quarter finals.
I would agree with that. I don't really care for number rankings as they are not really accurate. I kind of look at rankings in groupings. Is there a huge difference between say #8 and #15? I dont think so. You may give an advantage to the #8 team, but would they blow out a #15 side? Probably not. Being an American, I take the rankings of our team as flattery as I am sure Bruce Arena and the team do. BUT I would say, well, eventhough germany is not as strong as it once was - I still think they would beat us most of the time. The ELO ratings show Mexico way ahead of us eventhough we have beaten them the last 3 years on a fairly consistent basis. So--in my summation!!!! Grain of salt!
Well, the ranking is strictly mathematical, so it's a bit pointless to argue if teams are to high or to low. But of course you could argue that the system itself is stupid .