1) Sorry for the Argentina mistake. Thanks for catching it. 2) Let's not fault Japan for beating the Omans and Bahrain since the US could not beat Panama and Jamaica. The "strength of schedule" is reflected in points given for a win and deducted for a loss. If the US didn't tie Haiti, Poland's B squad and the aforementioned CONCACAF duo, it coud have conceivably been ranked 12-15. ELO also gives points for goals scored and the US has not been thrashing its opponents aside of Panama. (And, yes, this is the same system for the BCS bowl rankings) 3) Voros, you're absolutely right about the subjective values having a numerical/statistical representation. But I'd quibble with you on some points. It looks like you give mulligans easier than a computer would. Doesn't Spain get off too easily for tying Lithuania and Holland for Macedonia? In your heart of hearts, you know that these games were abominations but you have to dink the top teams just the same. 4) ELO has a "constant" ranking. If Japan happened to be a top ranked team going into 2,004, it'd still probably be a top ranked team with their record, despite beating a bunch of nobodies. This is where problems lie. One could start a year zeroeing out all rankings and go from there like a pro league or one could arbitrarily assign rankings - preseason polls - and adjust from there. ELO and FIFA have a much greater latency factor built in that way whereas the NFL/MLB/NBA standings reflect everyone equally despite having different non round-robin type schedule for its clubs. FWIW, Japan is a mirror image of the US - where it has shortcomings, the US is strong and vice versa. Japan is a very technically skilled team but lacks size and experience playing a physically challenging game. It benefits when its talent goes to Europe where they pick up toughness, the US talent goes to Europe to pick up skills. Just my take.
My heart of hearts doesn't enter into it. I enter the games, computer spits out the numbers. I'm sure the computer did in fact adjust for these results, but the reality here is that we're trying to gauge overall team strength, not simply hand out punishments and rewards. That's what tournaments are for. Ratings are simply to assess the relative strengths of various sides. In ELO the last game a team has played is essentially weighted severely more important than the rest of them. That's the way their system works. Most recent games are weighted more, more important games are weighted more, strength of schedule is a huge factor. Could I give even greater weight to recent games than I do? Absolutely. But I haven't seen any evidence that I should. Portugal lays an egg against Liechtenstein in one game, and then in their next tears Russia limb from limb. The two games happened in a span of three days, why should the 2nd count so much more than the first?
The USA gained 11 points, which is a significant gain in the FIFA system. They stayed in 11th place because (a) they were 17 points out of 10th place last month, and (b) All 10 teams ahead of them gained points as well.
if anyone has both the lists(fifa and ELO) how about averaging them out? or give me a link to the elo list and ill do it.
heres the average of the ELO and fifa lists, just another perspective: 1.brazil 2.argentina 3.france 4.czech republic spain 6.england 7.netherlands 8.portugal 9.italy mexico 11.denmark 12.japan 13.Germany Greece Turkey USA 17.ireland sweden 19.croatia iran uruguay what it all means-nothing, all the ties dont help either.
They are, but the question is how much more important. The problem with ELO is that the rankings lose some meaning because they could change so dramatically in a week. I believe at one point during the Euros there were something like 5 different number one teams as teams would do well and then lose a game. That's unhelpful because it's not really trying to measure team strength, it's trying to reward teams for winning and punish them for losing. It's a system that would work well for awards, but not as well for judging overall strength of the teams in question. Brazil won the World Cup while winning all 7 games and are now on top of CONMEBOL qualifying for WC 2006 and they are behind Argentina? How exactly? The reason of course is simply a result of the way the ELO system works, not really because Argentina has shown any evidence of being better than Brazil.
The Olympics don't count, it's a youth tournament U-23. The reason is because the Argentinians have pointed more by beating worse teams in meaningless matches. As an example, Argentina took the number one spot by beating Japan in a friendly in Japan. They were 6th after they lost to Mexico in Copa America. Then they gained a spot when they beat Uruguay. Then they gained another spot when they beat Peru. Then they gained another spot when they beat Colombia. Then they gained another spot without playing at all. They tied Brazil in the Copa America final and lost on penalties. They're rank didn't change. Then they took 1st in Japan. Does that sound like the sort of triumphant march necessary to leap over 5 of the best teams in the World into 1st place? It was the Copa America, a tournament so important the USA decided not to go. Another problem is that time is measured strictly by what number game a game was in a series. In other words a team's next to last game counts the same whether it happened last week or last year.
savan, good stir, but a little ingenuous of you. AUS tend to do well in their games, however few they eventually get to play. The reason AUS are low (49) on FIFA rankings (versus ELO) is that they CAN'T play enough (ie 7 or more) HIGH-POINTS (ie Oceania competitions) games EACH & EVERY year for up to 8 YEARS. The games just aren't played in Oceania, unlike in Europe. As some-one said earlier, you can only play where you do, as you can't just up and move continent to suit yourself. You know from your forays into the Oceania forum that AUS has just played the Solomon Islands in a H&A tie for the OFC Nations Cup and now FIFA has them jumping 15, yes 15 places, on the back of just those 2 games. These two games were the first that AUS has played in about 5-6 months, during which time they progressively dropped about the same number of places in FIFA rankings. I'd lay a bet on AUS being ahead of your team Norway in the FIFA rankings, if they actually played regularly in all the UEFA competitions, for all the FIFA ranking points on offer there.
But then the solution is to give them their proper weight. Not zero. But not particularly meaningful.
FIFA rankings are a little too academic for me. A more market-driven way to look at relative strength of national teams is the betting markets. http://www.willhill.com/iibs/EN/buildcoupon.asp?couponchoice=FB181155 William Hill puts the U.S., along with 7 other teams, at a ranking tied for spots #11 to #18. Teams better than the U.S. (in order): Brazil Germany Argentina Holland France England Italy Portugal Spain Czech Teams on par with U.S. (order doesn't matter - odds to win WC06 are all 67:1): Turkey Sweden Paraguay Mexico Greece Denmark Croatia Both systems (FIFA, WillHill) have their biases, but this looks about right to me.
Markets are a wonderful thing but these odds are given for a specific event, the World Cup, 06, where Germany, just as example, would/should have an advantage over the US playing on a home soil in front of home crowds. An odds system that would come closer to the ELO raison d'etre would have the data for a neutral territory meeting or a "home and away" series. While Hill's numbers are entirely reasonable, the betting line is a fairly crude standard. ELO ranks teams similarly but manages to differentiate them by the smaller margins with Argentina being the highest currently with 2,000 points and other teams being as little as 2 points apart (1973 for Italy at 8, 1971 for Portugal at 9). The US "grouping" of Ireland (16) at 1824, Turkey (17) at 1823, US (18) at 1818 and Croatia (19) at 1816 is so tight that one good win/one bad loss could vault one team several notches upward or downward. Of course, one could ask a question whether any ranking that sets teams apart by a 0.0005% variance is statistically significant to begin with ... but if them are the rankings you want, them are the rankings you get.
Ah, but FIFA's rankings go towards determining the seeds in the WC (they are part of the formula) and that is not too academic I hope.
Couple things to consider. Brazil played Argentina and beat them in the Copa America, and they beat them 3-0 this year in WC Qualifying with Ronaldo scoring 3 goals. Yet they are ranked behind Argentina. Anyone who truly believes that France and Spain deserve to be in the top 5 after their continually dismal performances is on crack. France dominated Euro qualifying against weak teams like Israel, but looked beaten and unisnspired in the Euros. They likely would not have advanced had Zidane not worked two minutes of magic vs England. Spain has not looked good for two years, and didnt even advance in the Euro Cup. You have got to wonder how skeweed the ranking is that it gives such a premium to historical performances.
That's what a continuously graded computer ranking does. The only other way to do is purely subjectively, the way many coaches or the various "power" polls work where one person makes all the decision and then some form of an average is taken. Then you can drop or raise a team by half a dozen spots on a whim ... and hope that others agree with you.
Heres my top 10. 1.Brasil 2.Portugal 3.England 4.Argentina 5.Netherlands 6.Czech Republic 7.France 8.Spain 9.Germany 10.USA Other CONCACAF teams- Jamaica somewhere in the 40's or 50's. Canada somewhere in the 70's and 80's. Honduras somwhere in the 30's and 40's. Guatemala somewhere in the 30's. Mexico between 11th and 15th.Costa Rica in the 20's. I would have some other teams like-Poland 20's. Ireland 11th-20th. Cameroon 11th-13th possibly top 10. Australia 20's. Greece 20's. Turkey 15th-20th. Ukraine 30's.Paraguay 15th-25th. Croatia 20's. Spain is 8th because they havent done much of anything now as far as talent well they could challenge Brasil for #1 but, really as a team they havent proven to be a great team yet.England at 3rd because they did make it to the qrts in Euro 2004 and lost on a bad call and since then have had 3 wins in 4 matches.Australia is really high but, they beat the teams they are supposed to beat and dont do so bad against great teams.
I agree with this. But I am one of those guys that has to see it to believe it. If i had to speculate though, I am more inclined to agree with those who say we are 17 or 18th. We might be better than that, but lets play some tougher teams and find out for sure.