Europe will get a bit clearer based on what happens in Nations League. Teams in League A just have to not finish last, and they will be Pot 1... huge bonuses for teams like Scotland, Hungary and the rest of the non traditional teams in League A. After that Pot 2 will be filled with mostly equal teams as it will have the 4th place teams in League A and the top 2 in League B. Obviously everyone will want to avoid England. The step from Pot 2 to 3 otherwise should not be that steep. There will obviously be teams you want and teams you will want to avoid. Pot 4 really shouldn't be interesting unless Sweden fails to win their nations league group. If they do, they will be the Pot 4 team that everyone will want to avoid. It is absolutely futile to predict who will come out of UEFA until they at least draw the pots and we have months until that happens.
Again, your ranking is a fun to watch. have you counted in any of the AFCON results? Where? Your placing of african teams look like there was no AFCON. Senegal in pot 2, almost in pot 1? For what reason please?
Senegal are for me a borderline world class national team. A top 15 side in the world. The most consistent CAF side over the last 6-7 years. They had not the best of AFCONs but it was still a decent AFCON. They were pretty strong in the group stage and finished on 9 points but just came undone by hosts and eventual winners Ivory Coast on penalties in the round of 16. Mane could have easily made it 2-0 at some point in the 2nd half. He didn't and it came back to bite them. Anyway. Senegal must be in pot 2. If you argue otherwise I wonder who else would be in their place in pot 2.
Senegal are good but not much better than half dozen other AFC, CAF, and Concacaf sides. In fact, taken together, the top 20 in ROW would IMO be as follows: Japan B+ USA B+ Morocco B+ Senegal B+ Ivory Coast B/B+ Mexico B Iran B S. Korea B Nigeria B Australia B-/B Canada B-/B Egypt B-/B Mali B- Saudi Arabia B- Uzbekistan B- Jordan B- Burkina Faso C+/B- Qatar C+ Cameroon C+ (any of a dozen CAF sides)
don't like your letter system but agree with this for the most part except that Canada and the lower end of Asia are too high. Qatar were the host of the World Cup and soundly embarrassed. I would put dozens of Africa teams above Qatar and lower tier of Asia (add in the middle of CONCACAF as well at the moment) until they do something. And don't go and say they won the Asia Cup. Show me what you do outside your federation, then we can talk.
I have rated these teams roughly as I see them now overall, not how they were showing previously per se nor how they will show in a couple of years. Other than inadvertently overlooking Algeria, I am generally content with how I have rated these teams. You can rate them differently as you wish. Just for context, though, below is how the top 20 in ROW would appear based on (a) FIFA rankings and (b) ELO rankings. FIFA Morocco 12th USA 13th Mexico 15th Senegal 17th Japan 18th Iran 20th Korea Rep 22nd Australia 23rd Nigeria 28th Egypt 36th Qatar 37th Ivory Coast 39th Tunisia 41st Algeria 43rd Panama 44th Mali 47th Canada 50th Cameroon 51st Saudi Arabia 53rd Costa Rica 54th ELO Japan 15th Iran 20th Mexico 23rd Morocco 25th Senegal 26th Panama 27th Australia 29th USA 30th S. Korea 36th Canada 40th Tunisia 45th Algeria 47th Uzbekistan 48th Egypt 50th Iraq 52nd Nigeria 54th Qatar 56th Mali 57th Ivory Coast 58th Jamaica 59th
Nations League will be a factor for sure, but at the same time I'm going to assume that the likes of France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Spain and even Germany and Holland can avoid last place and get into pot 1 fairly comfortably. And safe to say England will be in pot 2. So, I'm not even sure we will have greater clarity after the Nations League group stage wraps up in November. We have to wait for the actual WC qualifying draw to get a sense of teams' chances, IMO.
My ranking's ROW Top 20 as it stands. The rankings for the CONCACAF teams aren't updated yet but based on results this is what I have as of right now. 1. Senegal 2. Japan 3. Morocco 4. USA 5. South Korea 6. Iran 7. Australia 8. Mexico 9. Ivory Coast 10. Nigeria 11. Egypt 12. Mali 13. Tunisia 14. Saudi Arabia 15. Panama 16. Canada 17. Algeria 18. DR Congo 19. South Africa 20. Iraq I agree with FIFA on 18 teams. As for ELO I agree with them on 17 teams. Jordan who you put 16th is actually nowhere near my top 20. There are plenty of CAF sides who are by my estimation stronger than Jordan. Namely Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Angola and Guinea who all miss out on my ROW Top 20. Then there's also Qatar and Uzbeistan from Asia who don't make my ROW top 20 who I see stronger than Jordan. Then there's maybe Jamaica from CONCACAF who I see about on par with Jordan.
I mean, we will know the pots at least. If lets say sweden end up pot 4 i would remove their chance at qualifying. also if a portugal somehow gets relegated from league a and ends up in pot 2, i would be weary of their chances depending on the draw.
I'm weary of almost everyone's chances of making the WC from Europe except probably France and England. Simply because any pot 1 team could get England and that would probably spell the playoffs for them. And if they're not France, there is a decent chance they don't survive the playoff, which has this crazy single-leg format. On top of that, a 4-team/six game group stage leaves very little room for error, so there is likely to be a few pot 1 teams in those playoffs. In a way, I hope this new batshit format results in 2 or 3 top UEFA powers missing the World Cup. A confederation that finds the time to stage Nations League quarterfinals over two legs has the time to stage a proper qualifying system.
Someone will definitely screw up, either by drawing England or through stupid results. But with such large pots, there will be such a massive drop off. Pot 2 will include teams with zero, 1 or not in a long time World Cup Qualifiers. Pot 3 could give you Ireland or it could give you Kazakhstan... big difference. UEFA has gone full CAF with qualifying.
Tunisia have dropped a lot in my estimation since the World Cup. The rest are mostly within the same ball park on how I see things, except for Jordan. I was impressed with them. I rate them now how I would have rated Tunisia in the past and where you have Tunisia now.
The massive drop off reduces the margin for error even more. Say a 5-team group has Gibraltar and Luxembourg in it, or a 4-team group has just Luxembourg. Even a pot 3 team like Slovenia or Wales would be expected to get max points off those teams. So that gives the pot 1 team only 4 games to prove their superiority over the other two teams in the group.
Would the first tiebreaker be goal differential, basically who pounds the minnow the hardest. IIRC the were some EUFA qualifiers in which GD did not include the results against the bottom team in the group. Does anybody know how it will work here?
In the same vein how you see Tunisia I see Canada. I think Canada's downfall is even worse than Tunisia's. Tunisia have still occasionally games where they show glimpses of what they can do. Canada's form has gone downhill since the World Cup. I think your evaluation of Canada is still heavily down to their form in the lead-up to the World Cup and maybe the World Cup itself. But it has become a lot worse since. They lost post World Cup to sides such as Jamaica and Honduras..... The way they're going they may soon disappear from my ROW Top 20.
I admit not following Canada since the World Cup. I know their results have been subpar but if you look at which side has dropped the most in FIFA rankings, you will see Tunisia having dropped 13 places compared to 2 for Canada. Admittedly, however, some of that is merely a function of Tunisia having been much better ranked to start with. In fact, even now Tunisia rank 41st and higher than Canada (50). Overall, I am content with the FIFA rankings, much more so than with ELO (which has a 'garbage in-garbage out' data input problem) yet being also happy that FIFA (the past few years) has been using ELO's basic methodology and formula which I see as fundamentally sound. That doesn't mean I agree with anyone's rankings 100% of the time or that any rankings (even mine) will prove more reliable than FIFA's despite the latter missing the boat quite often as well. But that is ultimately on football! Which is what makes the sport so captivating.
As for my "letter system" that @uuaww doesn't like, its main purpose is to convey the overall parity that exists between teams that might be numerically quite apart. And to provide a more common basis to judge quality across confederations and internationally. The letters themselves convey similar meanings as you have in letter grades in American universities: A (excellent) B (good), C (average), D (poor) F (fail). Teams in the A category for me are those which have all the elements to bank on them as a contender for any major tournament, specifically excellent overall results illustrated by being generally a top 10 ranked team per FIFA rankings, proven talent usually associated with the best players in the best leagues and competitions, as well as having good historical pedigree and often the basic domestic infrastructure and league to provide them greater stability and cushion in case of injuries, drop in form and to have that inner self belief that they can and deserve being anointed among the very best in the world. Teams in the B category for me are those which can be expected to qualify to the World Cup, with good overall results illustrated by being generally a top 50 ranked team per FIFA rankings, endowed with sufficient proven talent and basic ingredients to provide them some cushion arising from fluctuating form and injuries to keep them in contention. The highest B Category teams (B+) should ordinarily be reasonable bets to qualify to the knock-out rounds at the World Cup and usually be among the top 20 teams in the world. The strictly B category teams generally need some luck and special circumstances to advance from a World Cup group but should usually have some realistic hopes of doing so. ROW teams in the B category will usually be among the favorites and contenders in their region to qualify to the World Cup and a priori favorites to finish among the top (e.g. quarterfinalists or better) in their continental championships. Teams in the higher end of C category are those which to me are at the cusp of having B category attributes, competitive within their own confederation, but perhaps lacking in some of them either lacking the overall results to place them among the the top 50 teams, or talent, or international experience, or some other combination of such attributes. Still, among ROW teams many C and certainly C+ teams will be in contention to qualify to the World Cup.
Yes, the first tiebreaker will be GD because it is a FIFA competition. Many WCs in the past featured 4-team preliminary groups in Europe. Hitherto, all UEFA club competition groups featured 4 teams playing 6 games. The UEFA preliminaries will be exciting, unpredictable and will optimise fan engagement; I don't see what is crazy or negative about that.
How my recent rankings sees the ROW 1. Japan 2. Morocco 3. Senegal 4. USA 5. Australia 6. Mexico 7. Tunisia 8. Mali 9. CIV 10. Iran 11. South Korea 12. Nigeria 13. Cameroon 14. Canada 15. South Africa 16. Algeria 17. Cape Verde 18. Egypt 19. Saudi Arabia 20. Panama I think my rankings have Australia and Tunisia too high. Nigeria and CIV are too low. Qatar also should probably be in the top 20, but their record prior to the Asian Cup is very poor, and their only real good result in the Asian Cup was beating Iran. Without my formula just 100% my subjective opinion it would look like this. 1. Senegal 2. Morocco 3. Japan 4. USA 5. CIV 6. Nigeria 7. Canada 8. Mexico 9. Iran 10. South Korea 11. Australia 12. Mali 13. Cameroon 14. Egypt 15. South Africa 16. Algeria 17. Tunisia 18. Saudi Arabia 19. Panama 20. Cape Verde
Canada lost at home to Jamaica and is going through an economical crisis/ federation crisis. I think they would lose to most teams on that list at current form. Heck, I think there is a slight chance they might be eliminated by Trinidad and Tobago next Month.
Yeah they also beat Jamaica away. Maybe I am relying more heavily on their form further back, probably should be lower, but most teams on that list have lost one off games to much weaker opposition. That in itself wouldn't bring a team so far down.
I don't follow Canada closely enough to judge whether their loss to Jamaica was akin to say Iran's loss to Qatar. But, regardless, Canada doesn't deserve being ranked above Iran. I give you slack with one home team, namely Nigeria being slightly overrated, but putting Canada above a team like Iran that went undefeated in 2023 and suffered its first loss in 20 matches since the World Cup in the semifinal of the Asian Cup against the host (still hurtful) seems unfair.
Being undefeated is relative to the level of opposition you play so it doesn't necessarily mean much. More important are the matches against teams of similar quality. Especially when the chips are down. Iran did very well to beat Japan but then lost the next match to a pretty poor Qatar team. My opinion of them didn't really go up or down post Asian Cup. Canada hasn't really played too many meaningful matches post WC. The Gold Cup they used a B squad. They've recently had some similar opponents as Iran. They lost badly to Japan in a friendly, (but not as badly as the Germans) Whereas Iran beat Japan But they also beat Qatar in a pre WC friendly very convincingly while Iran of course lost. Both teams lost to the US recently, Canada lost to them in an away match, while Iran lost on neutral territory. I'm still impressed at how Canada dominated concacaf WCQ, but admittedly that is getting old, although not completely irrelevant yet.
Iran beat Qatar's full squad 4:0 in a friendly a couple months ago. In fact, the Asian Cup loss was Iran's 1st loss to Qatar in our previous last 10 encounters. But, at the end of the day, you can see things your way. The ones I find to have less basis, are the ones I mention to you.