Group of Life where maybe everyone has a chance

If I were to venture a guess than the FIFA format which means that 50% of points are from the last year helped Algeria significantly as they had 7 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss (the draw and loss against similarly ranked opposition). That means that Algeria has a significant 490 points for the last year alone, which is more than teams like England, France, Croatia or Russia.

ELO has a longer memory, so their poor showing at the 2013 AFCON, not qualifying for the 2012 AFCON and the poor 2010 World Cup still count heavily against them.

 

Thats my definition of anti-football.

 

Good post, a lot of ignorance regarding Algeria. I hope they can have a better outing this time, 2010' especially that Slovenia match was really dissapointing.

 

I can't give you a good answer on that because I don't know how the formula's work exactly. One thing I'm convinced about is that NONE of the rankings are correct. If I had to choose though, I would trust FIFA's ranking the most (even though they have Algeria a little bit high). At the very least, I can calculate the FIFA rankings on my own and there is transparency in how the numbers are calculated. When it comes to ELO and SPI, they use special formulations that cannot be checked as easily so there is little oversight in how the numbers are being produced.

ELO in general tends to underrate African sides when plotted against the rest of the world. This probably has a lot to do with Africa's poor World Cup performances. If you think about it though, the World Cup is played every four years, and using Africa's bad history against them is pretty silly when you consider the small simple size. ELO has Algeria as the 7th best African side right now - just a shade below South Africa and Cameroon. I'd argue that Algeria is much better than South Africa and as good as Cameroon; I still think the rankings are fair in that the teams are separated by less than 10 points. I do believe ELO ranks Egypt too high, probably because of their continental dominance in the past decade. My biggest issue with ELO is that once you get out of the big 4 (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria), there's a big drop off when it comes to the quality of African squads. If anyone watches the African Cup, they'd notice that this is far from the truth. Africa is a pretty deep confederation. Senegal is ranked 61st by ELO and Morocco is ranked 74th and I think they can beat most international sides on any given day.


SPI is a lot more confusing than ELO. It actually looks like a bunch of nonsense to me. I can't even rationalize how they came up with their rankings. The only good thing with SPI is that they don't underrate CAF as a federation. My problem is SPI ranking Algeria as 16th in the continent! This means that there are 10 other African sides that theoretically should've made it to the World Cup over Algeria. Kind of ridiculous for rankings to suggest that. The most confusing part about SPI is that Algeria is 6-3-4 (W-D-L) against African teams ranked above them in SPI since 2010. How is it possible that Algeria has a winning record against teams ranked above them in the rankings?

SPI also claims that it factors in 'player ratings' in the Top European leagues when calculating the rankings. Firstly, player ratings are a completely subjective measure. Secondly, Algeria has several players that have actually performed really well in Top European leagues and yet they're still ranked below African teams that don't have a single player in these leagues (Zambia, Guinea, Libya, South Africa). Even when you look at the rankings at an international level, Algeria is ranked behind Panama, Uzbekistan, Bolivia, Finland, Venezuela, Belarus, Iceland, and Jamaica. They are barely ranked ahead of New Zealand too. We're talking about Panama which couldn't beat USA's C-squad at home in a vital playoff game. Or New Zealand who got their butt handed to them by a domestic based Mexican squad. I would favor Algeria against all of those teams on neutral ground. This is hardly ground-breaking either. It's not like I'm saying Algeria should be ranked above strong squads like Turkey, Sweden, or Austria. I'm talking about weak teams with bad form and weak squads.

I'm also really skeptical of SPI because it's the only ranking system made by an American. Notice how teams in CONCACAF are ranked very highly: USA (16), Mexico (25), Costa Rica (27), Honduras (32), Panama (46). Really? All of those teams are about 10 spots higher than they should be ranked.

SPI's ranking of CONEMBOL is also confusing: Paraguay (19), Peru (23), Venezuela (34), Bolivia (42). That means the worst team in CONCACAF is 42nd in the world. No way that's true. Bolivia only wins its games at home in the mountains since they play in the thin air (I think it's actually illegal to play matches at these high elevations). Paraguay has been a mess since the the last World Cup. Venezuela only recently started getting good at football (they're better at baseball) but their team hardly warrants such a high rating.

ELO makes some sense since it uses history in overrating many of the European side. SPI is just a complete mess. Don't know why ESPN uses statistician Nate Silver, who doesn't even watch football, to make up rankings for international sides.

 

My comments on the FIFA rankings only applied to its ranking of Algeria - as a whole, FIFA rankings are obviously flawed. The issue with the FIFA rankings here is that all the AFC teams ended their WC qualification in early 2013. This means they haven't played competitive matches since early last year. As a result, this has greatly affected many of the AFC teams in the rankings. A similar phenomenon happened with Brazil since they haven't had a competitive match since 2010 (with the exception of the Confederations Cup).

One thing to note was that the CHAN tournament had no effect on the FIFA rankings for African teams. They're actually not counted at all. The reason why many African teams dropped in the recent rankings is because these are the first rankings that do not include the 2010 African Cup of Nations. This is why Egypt (winners) and Ghana (runner-ups) fell in the latest ranking. In the past 4 years alone, Algeria has been better than both these teams when it comes to their overall winning percentage. That's likely why it was able to rise up higher.

 

Wrong. The CHAN tournament matches were counted in the FIFA rankings for African teams. And these results were counted as friendlies, which actually hurt the teams that played more such games (Ghana, Nigeria), than those that didn't (Algeria). I have no idea why CAF asked for these results to be counted in the FIFA ranking as it is actually detrimental to CAF's overall ranking. Here's proof they are counted into the ranking total:

http://www.fifa.com/associations/association=gha/fixturesresults/gender=m/index.html

Right now Ghana has a meager 300 pts total for the last year, simply because of the amount of 'friendlies' it has supposedly played. Egypt by comparison has 530 pts for the last year. Pray tell - which team is going to the World Cup?

The other significant reason why CAF teams dropped in the ranking is because AFCON 2013 and AFCON 2012 results dropped to 50% and 30% in weight.

As for AFCON 2010: You are wrong. Results from 2010 only constitute 10% of the final total and the effect of these results being scratched off was secondary, apart from Egypt, which basically lost their last source of good points totals in the last four years (apart from the last year, where they have 6 wins and 2 losses, most of which were in Continental qualifications).

 

To summarize:
- Nigeria and Ghana were punished for doing well at the CHAN
- All top African nations with good performances at the AFCON tournaments were hit by three such tournaments being depreciated in February - 2013 from 100% to 50%, 2012 from 50% to 30% and 2010 20% to 0%.

Just to prove how fickle the FIFA ranking is - the Ghana case is especially telling.

GHANA:
During the last 12 months period they:
- Won 5 and lost 1 during World Cup qualifiers;
- Won 3 and drew 3 (group, PSO win and loss) at the CHAN
and had 1 win, 1 draw and 2 losses in friendlies (two of those games were local based squads).

Despite the above they have a meager point total of 300 for the last 12 months, which I believe is their lowest point total since 2005. This may be slightly off as I used current FIFA rankings to calculate, but according to my calculations if we remove the local-based squad games Ghana would have had ca 123 FIFA points more!!!

Which would place Ghana 23rd in the world (ahead of Cote d'Ivoire) as opposed to 37th according to the February ranking.

NIGERIA:
If we discard games played with local-based players (Nigeria had 11 such games during the last 12 months, which significantly impacted the FIFA ranking) the difference isn't as drastic, but Nigeria would have ca 75 points more (43rd in the FIFA ranking as opposed to the current 47th).

COTE D'IVOIRE:
They played two qualifying games with local based players against Nigeria to qualify for the CHAN. If we discard those two results Cote d'Ivoire would have 48 FIFA points more (21st in the world, ahead of Mexico).

 

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Sorry if it takes that much text to explain why your team is brilliant and apparrently a dark horse for the title even, it is probably a load of horse shit. No need to emphasize I did not reach the end of your post...

 

1. I never said my team was a dark-horse. If you read my comment you would have seen that I only claimed that we aren't push-overs. I never even said we would win a game.

2. If you're not going to read why do you feel so compelled to comment? This isn't even a thread for your team. You end up looking like the foolish party.

3. A rudimentary look at your comment history shows that you spend a painful amount of time trying to justify the talent's of Holland's team. Ohh the irony.

 

Algeria beat Slovenia (whom they lost to in 2010) 2:0 today. So either they are a better team or Slovenia is weaker.

South Korea easily beat Greece 0:2, while Russia beat Armenia. May not be as weak a group.

 

1. You said if any other non-powerhouse team had 'your' collection of players, they would be considered a dark horse. Or siomething like that. Ergo, Algeria should be considered a dark horse in your opinion.
2. You are right. I was reading this thread and got stuck in your lengthy post. Should've ignored it.
3. That must have been a really really rudimentary look, bordering on non-existent.

 

not as easy as it seems...

it was a friendly game in algeria between an algerian team that will play a world cup and a slovenian team who is out...not the same conditions, not the same motivation, not the same dynamics.

this group is difficult to judge...belgium has a top 10 team right now but it's their first international competition in 12 years and we expect them too much!
russia is in and out all the time....when was the last time they reached a second round of a world cup?
algeria 4 years ago, ended with one point in a group with slovenia and usa, seriously...but they are better now.
south korea? mmm kind of team we tend to underestimate eventhough they went through their round in 2010 and 2002.

i think belgium and south korea might lead this group...but i'm really not convinced by my words...i think in this group both of the 4 teams have reasons to be optimist.

 

BTW Nabil Bentaleb debuted for Algeria.

So basically if you look at Algeria's potential starting XI its not looking bad:

----------------------Mbohli-----------------------
-------Bougherra--------------Medjani----------
Mandi-----------------------------------Ghoulam
------------------------------------------------------
-----------Bentaleb-----------Brahimi-----------
Feghouli-----------Taider--------------Soudani
-----------------Slimani---------------------------

Not a bad line-up if you ask me.

p.s. The squad I mentioned has just 3 players born in Algeria!!!

 

Much spare time this Monitor has... The force is great with this one.

 

Forgetting our wins against the Swiss as well as making a mistake on that Serbia game but it's all good. You already admitted your mistakes on another thread.

 

Just out of curiosity, what do people think the starting 11 will be for Russia and South Korea? I look up lineups and have trouble deducing if it's experimental or not. I have a pretty good idea who the key players are for the two countries but not so much starting 11 wise. Would really like to know.

 

Wow very impressive though you omitted several matches which I did not even bother to remember.
Our 0-4 embarrassment at hands of the Croatians on February 2013 and 2-1 win over Switzerland on November come to my mind.