If this is true (and I doubt Edgar is wrong), then I would bet that the reason is New Caledonia playing very few friendlies. The thing is that when you're ranked reasonably highly, and you play bad teams, you always move down in the rankings. Doesn't matter how much you win by, because winning margin is not a factor in the rankings. And this is especially true for friendlies (due to the weighting factor of friendlies vs. continental competition). If New Zealand played a few friendlies against that awful OFC competition, they will be guaranteed to plummet in the rankings even with wins in 100% of the matches.
Not quite. New Zealand's total points will still be 316 - no change for them. New Caledonia on the other hand will gain 86 points (according to my calculations). Reasons: 2007 South Pacific Games and FIFA's 5 games per 12 month period rule. This month New Caledonia has only two matches in the 0.5 time frame (12 - 24 months ago) - two friendlies against Vanuatu (a win and a loss), divided by 5. Next month, three matches will be "relegated" from 1 to 0.5: three WC qualifiers (2 wins and a tie). They will have 5 matches divided by 5. New Zealand are so low in the rankings because of the same "5 games per 12 month period" rule. They have played only 15 matches in the last 4 years. Only one of the 4 12-month time frames meets FIFA requirements of a minimum of 5 games: Code: 0 - 12 months 3 12 - 24 months 3 24 - 36 months 8 36 - 48 months 1
I noticed recent AFC Challenge Cup was treated as a friendly tournament. Why's that? Shouldn't it be a continental qualifier? After all, Caribbean qualifiers are treated like continental (for Gold Cup). South Pacific Games were also given World Cup qualifying status. This would boost India in the ranking..
There is no other road to the Gold Cup/OFC Nations Cup, that's why those competitions are given continental qualifier status. The AFC Challenge Cup participants had the chance to qualify through the main preliminary competition.
Not quite. As I understand, the least developed teams were not allowed to enter the qualifying competition. AFC Challenge Cup invitees however could enter the proper qualifying. Still, a Cup is not a friendly.
Teams like North Korea , Turkmenistan , Tajikistan and all other AFC Challenge Cup teams except India do only have AFC Challenge Cup 2008 and 2010 to qualify for the Asian Cup 2011 finals.
I agree. India is the only team from the Challenge Cup that also had a shot at qualifying for AFC 2011 through ordinary qualification rounds. The Challenge Cup should not have counted as a friendly.
Believe it or not, your result in the 1994 world cup has nothing to do with current rankings. It always amazes me how many fans are furious at their low team ranking and then quote results from the 1980s and 1990s. This is why computer rankings are always better than human rankings - they don't take into account the uniform, and actually judge teams on how good they are. Not that FIFA's rankings are perfect - it could definitely be improved - but at least it doesn't over-rank a team because another team wearing the same uniform did well 14 years ago.
I agree with you. But seeing Mexico finish top 3 in Copa América last year and making semi-finals of recentmost Confederations Cup, they should be higher up. Problem is they rarely play European teams. Last time Mexico defeated a team from UEFA was in January 2006..
Well one reason they have dropped is because that result in the confederations cup from more than three years ago has dropped in weight. Mexico HAS been ranked highly, so they can be ranked highly under the ranking system. But they have struggled in CONCACAF as late, and have been unable to beat the US. If they had won the Gold Cup in 2007, or not played terribly in 2005, then they'd be ranked higher. They also didn't get a great bounce from their round of 16 performance at the world cup because their group was a joke - they didn't have to beat anybody that was any good. Beat Iran, tie Angola and lose to Portugal? A team is supposed to move up in the rankings for that? Mexican fans always like to point to the times they look great and say "We should be ranked based on these games and results." But the reason Mexico is not ranked highly is because they're a schizophrenic team. Sometimes they look great, but sometimes they look awful. The rankings have to judge all games equally.
Thanks. I'm still confused however. How can Kyrgyzstan jump 22 places (+76pts) when they haven't played a game since May. I just don't get it.. BTW What is Yemen PDR? I thought this team ceased to exist in 1990. FIFA's clueless really.
Devaluation of results. In August, Kyrgyzstan had 3 matches (all loses) in the 0.5 time frame (matches played 13-24 months ago) and 9 in the last 12 months. For September, 4 of those matches dropped to the 0.5 time frame and increased both averages: the 0.5 and the 1.0. I hope it makes sense. Regarding Yemen DPR, I just use the names displayed by FIFA in their ranking.
I see. I didn't realize devaluation of lost games could actually make teams jump up the rankings. As for Yemen DPR, this should be Yemen or Yemen Republic. Yemen DPR was the former South Yemen (1967-1990). It was okay before and I don't know why FIFA would change it back. Makes you wonder how accurate their ranking is considering the effect it has on major competitions.
That's because (while there is some devaluation) it's more REvaluation of results within each "year-band" that is having the main impact. The old rankings had (something like) 5 good results and 3 poor results in the last year - so each match was worth 1/8 to that band. Now, only the 5 good results are in that band, so that each contribute 1/5 to it. That revaluation drives the ranking, rather than any devaluation. I'm not sure what this last comment is trying to say. For some reason the ranking table has reverted to using Yemen DPR while everywhere else in the website uses Yemen. A few of these types of things happened when the new FIFA website was launched a while back (Cook Islands rather than Cook Islands - reverting to Western Samoa etc). My guess is it's more an issue of the people updating the website than anything. J