The new rankings are out: http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/r...r=m/fullranking.html#confederation=0&rank=163
Seedings in World Cup Draw : Africa - FIFA July Ranking CONCACAF - FIFA May ranking UEFA - FIFA November ranking
Those rankings mae no sense, why did Poland drop to 23rd when we won against Kazahstan, Belgium and tied Serbia away. We qualified for the Euro top seed, makes no sense to me.
I dont get it, Croatia remains 10th for the third month in a row yet theyve only lost one game since the last world cup (including friendlies).
Don't complain, just calculate it yourself. Croatia had a very bad year 2006, when other top ten teams got 300-600 more points.
That's just absolutely hilarious. I'm now looking forward to next month's numbers. That 13 place drop for Mexico, putting them just under the US, will lead to long, entertaining discussions on various boards. And also goes to show what a farce the new rankings method is. Quite a few people are ok with the US at around 30. But Mexico has consistently played on par with Argentina, Brazil and others in big tournaments. Of course, Brazil and Argentina being at 6 and 7 all because Europe had their Cup is just as absurd.
And what do you think happens to Argentina and Brazil when the Copa America is around? What's your problem with the USA having a few more points than Mexico for maybe a month? Do you think the numbers are wrong? Calculate it yourself!
Wow... when was the last time the top five didn't have a CSF team? Code: 1 Spain 1557 0 0 2 Germany 1343 1 -21 3 Italy 1320 -1 -84 4 Netherlands 1299 1 0 5 Croatia 1282 2 0 The answer is never. Elo has the top 5 as Code: 1 Spain 2049 2 Argentina 1999 3 Netherlands 1998 4 Brazil 1987 5 Italy 1985
The '12 month' timeframe for weighting is what makes the FIFA rankings so crazy. They should use timeframes for the friendlies, but just use the 'last continental championship', 'last WC qualifiers', 'current WC qualifiers' as the weighting schemes for those games. The fact that teams shoot up the rankings when their continental championship happens then fall when it 'rolls off' 12 months later takes away from their credibility.
That would be good enough reason IMO. I may be a Germany fan as well, but to say that the Germans do not have one of the 5 best teams in the world is silly.
Call me silly. Today, Germany doesn't have one of the top 5 teams in the world. Germany has done a great job of over achieving in tournaments (See 2002, 2006, 2008). To claim that Germany was the 2nd, 3rd and 2nd best team in these tournaments would be silly - yet these were the results they archived. An extreme example of this would be Greece of 2004, I doubt that even Greek fans would claim that they were the best UEFA team, but they were the UEFA champions. Germany today is not as good as (in no particular order) Spain, Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Italy and are not measurably better than teams like Russia, Czech Republic, Portugal or Turkey. Having said that, put all these teams in a tournament with Germany and Germany will make it to the Final/Semi Finals more often than anyone else. Germany simply knows how to play in tournaments.
Completely disagree with you. It almost sounds weird saying this, but tournament results have started to become almost an underrated way to judge a team. Sure, there are always the odd teams that do well in a competition and then fall back to earth as they were predicted to (Greece 2004, Korea 2002, and let's face it.. probably Turkey 2008, etc.) but when you achieve solid results consistently, that means you are a good team. You can't keep looking at the Germans' recent good results like 2002, 2006, 2008 and writing them off. Those consistent results mean that they are an elite team. The only decent reason that many people don't believe Germany has an elite team (IMO anyway) is that they don't look great on paper. Which is actually an awful reason. It doesn't matter what players are perceived to be on paper, what matters in determining if a team is good is results. Results and nothing else. To me, being a "tournament team" as many call Germany precisely means that they are one of the best teams in the world. I don't care if a team has all the best players in history on it... if they get average results, then they are an average team, and vice-versa I'm in a bit of a rush so this response may need further elaboration from me... I'll be back later