Japan beat Belgium 3-2 in Belgium this week and tied against Netherlands in Netherlands outplaying the Dutch last week. Of course Belgium and Netherlands are better than Mexico.
Power rankings by Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/nov/21/2014-world-cup-finalists-rated?CMP=fb_ot 1 Spain 2 Brazil 3 Argentina 4 Germany 5 Italy 6 Holland 7 Portugal 8 Colombia 9 Uruguay 10 France 11 Belgium 12 Chile 13 England 14 Croatia 15 USA 16 Russia 17 Japan 18 Switzerland 19 Bosnia 20 Nigeria 21 Ghana 22 Ivory Coast 23 Mexico 24 Ecuador 25 Cameroon 26 Greece 27 Australia 28 South Korea 29 Costa Rica 30 Iran 31 Honduras 32 Algeria
The purpose of a good ranking system would be to get all these inconsistent results, and come up with a picture of how various teams rate. Unfortunately, though, we don't have a really good ranking system. FIFA's ranking do have major problems, in particular when it comes to comparing and rating teams from different confederations. The ELO rankings, while better, are also not without their problems. Nonetheless, if we went by the ELO rankings, which is the closest we have to a decent ranking even if the Africans sides for some reason appear under rated by ELO, the 32 teams in the World Cup would rate as follows. And, to give the Mexicans their due, Mexico would still rate above Japan but by a small margin. 1- Brazil 2- Spain 3- Germany 4- Argentina 5- Netherlands 6- Colombia 7- England 8- Portugal 9- Uruguay 10-Chile 11- Italy 12- France 13- United States 14- Switzerland 15- Russia 16- Ecuador 17- Greece 18- Belgium 19-Ivory Coast 20-Mexico 21-Croatia 22- Bosnia 23-Japan 24-Iran 25-Nigeria 26-Costa Rica 27-Australia 28-Ghana 29-South Korea 30-Honduras 31-Cameroon 32-Algeria
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1855697-power-ranking-the-32-world-cup-qualifiers 1 Brazil 2 Spain 3 Argentina 4 Germany 5 Colombia 6 Uruguay 7 Italy 8 Netherlands 9 Belgium 10 Chile 11 England 12 Japan 13 Russia 14 Ivory Coast 15 France 16 Bosnia 17 Switzerland 18 Korea Republic 19 Portugal 20 Ecuador 21 Nigeria 22 USA 23 Mexico 24 Croatia 25 Ghana 26 Greece 27 Cameroon 28 Algeria 29 Costa Rica 30 Honduras 31 Australia 32 Iran
It seems each of us is going to pick and choose the rankings and ratings that fit our preconceived notions, or at least our preferences! But I truly consider ELO the best of the bunch, even if Ghana in particular looks underrated by ELO. (Actually that makes me quite curious as to why Ghana is rated poorly?) In any case, I am rather confident the differences between the various teams in this tournament is not that huge, once you leave out 4-5 of the top seeds and a few others here or there (France in particular). Iran, which is being ranked as the weakest of the 32 finalists by some here, will nonetheless not feel it is really weaker going against perhaps close to half the field! Hence, the draw is going to be particularly significant for teams like ours. If our CAF opponent is Algeria or Cameroon, as opposed to the other West African teams, that will give us a lot of hope. If our top seed is Switzerland or Belgium, as opposed to Brazil or Spain or Argentina or Germany, certainly we aren't going to feel hopeless. Similarly, if the unseeded UEFA team in our group is Greece (or Bosnia or even Croatia) as opposed to Italy or Netherlands, then its not out of the realm of possibility that we might get a good result. The differences in this regard can be quite significant. A lot more significant perhaps than the differences between how you rate Iran compared to South Korea, or Algeria, or Honduras or Costa Rica or the like.
I agree the differences don't seem too big, but when you do a ranking of the teams then you have to put one team on rank 32. You have to put 16 teams in the lower half. If you put all teams on the same rank, then it's not a ranking anymore. Even though most rankings in this thread (my included) actually rather seem to be predictions instead of pure rankings, it's not like those "predictions" will be what happens in the future. All we know is that every round half of the teams will be eliminated and that not all the teams have the same probability of being eliminated. But having a higher probability of being eliminated doesn't necessarily mean that team will be eliminated and team with a lower probability will not. That's not how football works and that's not how probabilities work. In return that means ranking Iran not among the top 16 teams doesn't mean they will not survive the group stage, it just means that many people think other teams have a better chance to survive the group stage (currently independent from the actual group allocations). Also all the talks about probabilities doesn't mean we actually know the probabilities, even saying we have rough estimates for them is a stretch. All we have are past results of the teams and how the players are doing at their clubs (but that again is very hard to compare).
1. Brazil 2. Germany 3. Argentina 4. Spain 5. Belgium 6. Netherlands 7. Italy 8. Colombia 9. England 10. Uruguay 11. France 12. Portugal 13. Chile 14. Russia 15. Mexico 16. USA T-17. Ghana T-17. Switzerland T-17. Croatia T-20. Ivory Coast T-20. Bosnia - Herzegovina T-20. Japan 23. Ecuador 24. Nigeria 25. Greece 26. Australia 27. South Korea 28. Cameroon 29. Honduras 30. Costa Rica 31. Algeria 32. Iran
Well, Mexico defeated japan 2-1 on an official game this summer. Why do Iranians give so much weight to friendlies? I guess is because that's the only thing they have.
ELO and FIFA rankings still rate Ghana well below CIV and anyone with half a brain knows that Ghana is by far the best team on the continent at the moment. And there's very little reason why Ghana should be ranked so far below the US or even Nigeria. So that's enough to not really trust how they rank teams from CAF or any other region. I still can't believe that they cannot come up with a better way to rank teams. There's so much subjectivity to how it's maintained as evidenced by the fact that it caused a quality side like Egypt to go unseeded in the CAF playoffs and don't even get me started on the South Africa vs Spain friendly. And who the hell thinks that Switzerland truly belongs in the top 8 when teams like Italy, the Netherlands is lurking about. Even Uruguay seems sketchy right now? Yeah they won Copa America, but I don't really put as much stock in confederation tournaments personally. So rankings are horrible and I hate the fact that they exist. They're a somewhat necessary evil but they should have kept it the way that it was the last WC with the combination of rankings and previous placings.
Great to see we are already being underrated. I'd like to order our 3rd group of death in a row, please. We seem to do well with those.
ELO is by far the best "objective" ranking, but it's still a backward looking ranking. All these "power" rankings are basically all pure subjectivity, or like you say, made to fit preconceived notions. So they are as valid as any by each poster here.
Forget Psychosis hsv, he is obviously an Idiot. Bleecher report has a sports writer so you would think he would actually have some knowledge of the game.
1 Brazil 2 Germany 3 Spain 4 Argentina 5 Uruguay 6 Holland 7 Colombia 8 Chile 9 Belgium 10 Portugal 11 Ghana 12 Italy 13 Croatia 14 Russia 15 England 16 Ivory Coast 17 USA 18 Nigeria 19 Japan 20 Bosnia 21 Ecuador 22 Switzerland 23 France 24 South Korea 25 Cameroon 26 Greece 27 Costa Rica 28 Mexico 29 Australia 30 Algeria 31 Honduras 32 Iran
The final standings of the World Cup should determine the rankings, not some fvcked up formula FIFA creates.
Ghana isn`t the best team for me and especially not "by far". They lost two matches in their campaign while Nigeria and CIV didn`t lose a single one. and your statement on the copa is a joke. it is the most competitive confederation tournament.
Some of these are so entertaining. Bleacher saying we either will make it to the knockouts or get eliminated in the group....Ground breaking reporting right there. So Portugal has got out of every WC and Euro group since 2004, got out of back to back groups of death following going to the playoffs the previous two tourneys. Only to lose to the eventual Champions 1. by an offside and 2. by a PK shoot out. Yeah I would be more worried about AFC and mid level Euro sides more then Portugal. I guess looking at things that happen in tournaments doesn't matter. Why is Spain #1? Because of their qualifiers and friendlies right?
Well... one of those games was the return leg vs Egypt after a 6:1 thrashing. Not only is Egypt a formidable team, but Ghana had a 5 goal cushion which impacted how Ghana played. Nigeria's opposition was relatively weak compared to Ghana. Meanwhile CIV were a missed sitter away from not making the world cup (from which they scored on the breakaway).
I agree that Ghana's ranking is not commensurate with Ghana's strength relative to the teams ranked above it. But why is Ghana ranked so low? The rankings are derived from a seemingly objective methodology, based on points earned from the applicable formula and while the "confederation coefficient" may cause the FIFA's rankings to be skewed as far as comparing a team like Ghana with a team from UEFA or Conmebol in particular, I am not sure why Ghana is not rated as we would expect by ELO or even FIFA in comparison to teams from its own confederation such as the Ivory Coast? There must be some reason for this anomaly, a reason that might not justify the ranking but would explain it. And I kind of am curious to hear the explanation for it. Btw, I actually prefer that FIFA give its ranking the requisite significance so that it might then be forced to confront and fix the problems with it. We do need a good ranking methodology and system and FIFA has the resources and hopefully interest to come up with what one!
Both the FIFA and ELO rankings, may not be up to your personal liking, in my case I don`t trust in FIFA's, but they are based ona mathematical formula applied to each of the teams performance, which is basicly the same to every team in the world. For whatever issue, they are both completely objective in how teams are ranked accordingly to the formula they use, which in no part certifies it to be what the actual situation in world football really is. For anything of use out of them, they are useful only to get an approach of a relative strength for every team, and nothing more than that. Up to this moment there is no ranking system, proved to be perfect, as each of them will always give more importance to certain aspects, while at the same time not take in account others aspects, which to you or me, may differ between each other as black to white. Rankings may not be to your particular liking, but they are there not to satisfy you in particular, but to give some sort of tool for common thinking of most people at the same time. Most of them exist due to the reason that everybody wants there to be a perfect system which you can use to compare diferent teams, and as there is no perfect ranking, each user can use the ranking system that fits better to each of our own particular points of view. I agree with you, I believe that Ghana is over Ivory Coast, but this is our personal opinion, others may believe the opposite, and you know something ?, as it depends largely on the type of bar we pretend to use to compare them both, so we may all, be right.....
Yeah, according to Portugal fans, Portugal always gets the group of death, even if they share a group with Tahiti, San Marino and Virgin Islands, for Portugal fans, it will be the group of death .......
In a row, may be not, but Portugal had some terrible groups in the last 13 years. Namely, it got England and Germany in 2000 and Netherlands and Germany in 2012. Brasil and IC were also not easy in 2010. Not to mention that it always lost in the knockout stages against a team that at least reached the final, except in 2002: Spain twice, Germany, and France also twice. And it had to eliminate England and Netherlands in 2004 and 2006 to get beyond the quarter finals. Something not many teams accomplished recently.
I'm not entirely sure, but I would state two key possible reasons: - Ghana has a very poor friendly record, which contrasts with its official games record - the previous coaches executed a one-goal project meaning that even against low ranked teams they often won by a single goal - since ELO calculates points according to how 'badly' you beat them the one-goal project of prior coaches could influence that. The other general issue is that these rankings perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophesy. CAF teams are lower ranked, therefore the lower number of points you can achieve from inter-federation games, which in turn means the teams will be lower ranked. Add to that the fact that CAF teams are on a much closer level in general than most other federations and it causes a barrier for growth, which can't be broken without widespread high results at the World Cup. For one thing the current high ranking of CONMEBOL teams is a result of the good CONMEBOL showing in the 2010 World Cup, which meant there were much more points to be won within the federation.