USMNT International Rankings in Modern Era

For context, someone remind me exactly when we were ranked 5th (in the World, not CONCACAF).

 

That aged well.

 

I want to say we were 4th for some reason. I think Czech Republic was 2 and Italy was 3. It's been a long time so correct me if I’m wrong.

 

2006 heading into the World Cup, but that was FIFA not Elo, and afterward FIFA changed its rankings more in line with Elo.

Here were the Elo rankings for our group heading into the first week of the 2006 World Cup, which seemed a lot more accurate to me:

4. Czech Republic
7. Italy
16. USA
55. Ghana

The one exception is that Ghana was a lot stronger than those rankings suggested. Actually, Ghana has been consistently underrated by Elo due to its poor performances in friendlies. Coincidentally, I leave this article here without comment: https://deadspin.com/ghana-soccer-official-involved-in-match-fixing-sting-1595093701

 

After the T&T debacle I assumed that serious efforts would be made to remedy the situation.... but if you read appropriate articles, listen to Stars and Stripes on Sirius and well... just watch the product on the field... it is clear that the whole process is in disarray. We had one good youth coach [Ramos] and now he is gone. Our U17 team got embarrassed in the WC playing the same stagnant and inept style GB is coaching our USMNT squad to play. It is one giant cluster**** and there is literally no end in sight. The scariest part about it is that our youth talent seemed to offer a ray of hope and I am hearing some really bad things about the way youth club soccer is organized now. But the entire regime is in bed together and there is no owner that can just cut out the entire tumor and start over. One has to think that failing to Q again for the WC would be the final straw... but who is to say?

 

I've reorganized those by coaching era, i.e. by listing our Elo rankings during each year of each USMNT manager's spell in charge, plus the average of their rankings. If a manager was hired in the middle of the year, I only attributed that year's ranking to whichever manager was in charge of the USMNT for most of that year.

Gansler (89-91): 46, 54 (avg. 50)

Bora (91-95): 34, 33, 53, 52 (avg. 43)

Sampson (95-98): 32, 33, 35, 38 (avg. 35)

Arena (98-06): 20, 21, 29, 16, 16, 18, 17, 26 (avg. 20)

Bradley (06-11): 29, 19, 17, 23, 36 (avg. 25)

Klinsmann (11-16): 26, 13, 19, 30, 32 (avg. 24)

Arena (16-17): 27

Sarachan (17-18): 34

Berhalter ('19): 43

 

Huh. Would not have guessed 2013 was higher than 2009.

Think the fact that the rating dipped then went back up after 2006 showed how much we underperformed that WC. Should have made a run. Was trying to find some shot statistics from that WC but couldn't dig up any.

Nice work!

 

Things are looking up!

 

These aren’t yearly averages, they are our rating after our last match in that year. In 2013 our lowest ranking was 30th (post 2-1 loss to Honduras) and our highest ranking was 10th (post 4-3 win over Bosnia). In 2009 our low was 26th (post 0-3 loss to Brazil in the group) and our high was 9th (post a 2-0 win against Honduras after the CC).

I would be very interested in seeing averages, yearly, rolling 6th month, Elo rating points, whatever you and excel can get your hands on.

 

Once folks have decided to embrace the decline, they discover that the decline leads to an abyss. There was a time, now long ago, when Argentina's was the 5th most powerful economy in the world. There was a time, now seemingly long ago, when our school students ranked among the top ten in the world. There was a time, now clearly in the ancient days, when the USMNT was on the verge of making the semifinals of the World Cup.

I guess it is true that in the abyss no one can hear you scream. Because, Brothers, we sure do scream.....and clearly no one hears us.

 

The distinction I would draw would not be end of year versus beginning of year, each of those are somewhat arbitrary snapshots. If I had time I’d look at yearly averages and maybe rolling 5 and 10 game averages. If you imagine the graph just looking at individual data points you are going to see a lot of noise (swings between highs and lows) and those averages would better reflect the true trend line.

The overall point is true and the yearly averages would show it. Goalimpact’s age curve on player’s competition adjusted +/- says that players, overall, peak, plateau, and start to dip between ages 26 and 30. Those are the best years of the typical field player’s career. Think about who we have in that age group, especially 27-28, the peak years. That should be about half the team. Yedlin, Zimmerman, and Brooks are just 26. Long, Lletget, and Morales are 27. Jozy just turned 30. That’s not enough quality depth, especially in attack.

 

You can copy and paste these in excel yourself ; )

 

Cool stuff here but yeah it's not really that meaningful to select the end of the year number because as many of the comments point out, the end of the year is just an arbitrary point. Something like average ELO for a given year might give us a better sense. In another lifetime I would have had the time and will to do that, but now I just say thanks in advance to the kind homie who may do that work.

That said, the initial rating for the US may have been flattering/inflated relative to the soccer world at the time. For one thing, I think there may have been fewer countries then geopolitically. The USSR hadn't broken up and neither had Yugoslavia, so you've had like 10 new nations come on line from those two events alone.

OK just checked this: globally (not sure what ELO considers) there were 174 countries in the world in 1989, versus 195 now. So the number 46 in 1989 is relatively, not just absolutely, worse than 43 in 2019.

I also suspect there were fewer countries that were meaningfully competitive in soccer in 1989 relative to the number of countries versus now, but that's harder to prove. In 1989 the WC was pretty much the exclusive province of Europe and SA; I think Cameroon was the first country from Oceania, Africa or Asia to make the knockout rounds and that was in 1990. So it seems that the distribution of quality throughout the list of nations is flatter than it used to be. If that's right, it's another reason that 46 in 1989 looks worse than 43 in 2019.

DOn't get me wrong, y'all, I'm aware of how much our current position sucks in relation to expectations, history, and other nations. this is just to say that the story of these numbers is a bit more complicated than the 43/46 comparison lets on.

 

Here's a summary of our recent coaches impact on ELO score through their first 16 matches:

Coach.....................ELO pts.........Avg Opponent Rank
Arena (1st time):...+115 points...............30
Klinsmann:............. +24 points...............43
Bradley:.................. -19 points...............43
Berhalter:................ -46 points...............62

does anyone know an easy way to insert a graph from Excel?

 

Upload as picture to imgur or similar. Then use image function here.

That certainly doesn't flatter GGG. Ouch.

 

Here's an impromptu graph:

Arena - had the most difficult opponents, and the greatest gain, se he sets our "Arena Standard" at 0-0. He's at the origin for each coordinate. So we then get their results in this array.

Arena-1: Difficulty 0 ______________________Gain 0

Klinsmann: Difficulty -13 .............
Bradley:


Berhalter: Difficulty -32











Klinsmann_________Gain -91






Bradley___________Gain -134






Berhalter _______________ Gain -161


The amazing progress made over the last decade has never been more clearly illustrated. .........

 

There are caveats with some of these. For instance, our 2007 score (under Bob Bradley) is hurt a lot by the fact that he took a B team to Copa America and got clobbered. Before that tournament, our Gold Cup win had actually taken us to 15th in the rankings.

And I believe our ranking in Bora's last two years is hurt a lot by the fact that we played a million friendlies in that period without our European based players and amassed a really lousy record in those games. (A bit before my time as a fan, but at least that's what I understand from what I've read.) The mid-30s rankings we had just before and just after those two years is probably a better reflection of our level from that period.

There may be other years that need a bit more context, but those are the big ones that stand out to me: basically, any time we're playing a lot of games or several high stakes games against high quality opposition with a deliberately second or third choice team of ours, these scores are going to look off.

 

Thanks for the color - I'm impressed you remember all that. I presented the raw data but did see that the copa tourney was a disaster for Bradley.

Here's some more raw data: the three biggest net negative scores for each coach:

Coach.........3 biggest losses
Arena.......... -8, -13, -13* (@ Morocco, vs. Mex, @Mex)
Klinsmann:.. -9, -12, -15 (@belgium, vs CR, vs. Ecuador)
Bradley:......-27, -27, -38 (@ARGENTINA, @Colombia, @paraguay)
Berhalter:... -22, -25, -34 (vs. Venezuela, vs Mexico, @ Canada)

Notes:

• Red = Friendly
• Klinsmann's losses were all within his first three months taking over from Bradley
• As Kalm mentioned, Bradley's losses were all in the Copa in Paraguay where we took a B team

 

We drew the champions Italy and had the winning goal called back (correctly). Horrid mistake by Reyna cost us the Ghana game. Soundly outplayed by the Czech's in the opener.

 

So, the Jamaica losses and the T&T loss do not make the list?

 

Nope

 

I would have thought failing to Q for Russia would be the final straw.