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About Those FIFA World Rankings…

May 13th, 2006 | By: Chuck Closterman | 15 Comments »

By Thursday, June 15th, all of the 32 World Cup finalists will have played their opening match of the 2006 World Cup.

Of all the opening games, only one will match two teams in the top five of the FIFA World Rankings. That game is the Czech Republic versus the USA.

So why the lack of hype for what should be the best game of all the 1st round openers: #2 versus #4?

It is, of course, because nobody takes the USA’s ranking seriously — especially knowledgeable USA fans. Fans of Team USA will be the first to distance themselves from the big #4. Folks that don’t like Team USA seem to delight in hanging that number four ranking around our necks like an albatross. They say we have no chance in our opener against the #2 ranked Czech Republic.

But the people who like to beat us over the head with our #4 ranking are the same people who tell us we don’t have a chance against the Czech Republic, gleefully reminding us of their #2 ranking.

If ranking the USA #4 is ridiculous, could it also be ridiculous that the Czechs are #2?

With Brazil holding the #1 ranking, and deservedly so, you want to tell me the Czechs are the next best team in the world? That the Czech Republic is the best team in Europe? Give me a break…

The Czech Republic weren’t even the best team in their European qualifying group, a group of 7 teams that included such soccer powers as Finland , Macedonia, Armenia, and Andorra (yes, Andorra!)

So the next time you get a unsolicited dose of arrogant condescension from some aristocratic European football-snob, looking to mock the nations in CONCACAF, you just fire back with the likes of Malta, San Marino, Cyprus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Northern Ireland, Albania, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Faroe Islands. Even soccer-weak Kazakhstan, which is widely regarded as a land-locked nation in Asia, got to play the role of cannon fodder in the Ukraine’s qualifying group.

And remember… Finishing 2nd in your qualifying group might just be good enough to rank you 2nd in the world!

Tags: Czech Republic, USA

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Comments

By Matt | May 14th, 2006 at 12:07 am

I agree that both teams are probably ranked too high. They both are probably top 15. What I wonder is what bias in the rankings is benefitting the US right now. The US doesn’t loose very often, even if we don’t generally play the top teams in meaningful competitions. That should count for something, even if we aren’t number 4.

Posted from United States

By Juan | May 14th, 2006 at 3:03 am

They lost to Germany 1-0 in the quarter finals of the world cup last time.

That sounds pretty deserving of a high rank, me thinks.

Posted from United States

By Herbie | May 14th, 2006 at 3:06 am

The ELO Rankings seem to be a bit more realistic. http://www.eloratings.net/

They have us at 14 in the World and 3rd in Americas, behind Brazil and Argentina and just in front of Mexico.

Posted from United Kingdom

By Zero | May 14th, 2006 at 6:40 am

Just worndering, Aren’t Fifa and Elo rankings based on cumulative statistics?
In this way, the current position of a team in the ranking isn’t determined by (just) your latest results but by every result a team has done, so if a team lost a game in the 1930 it does count like a game lost 1 month ago for the determination of the current position of your team!
Add to this the fact that players aren’t immortal so games played just 6 years ago by a (supposed) completly different team does count like the latest game played by latest players of the same national team.

So this kind of ranking are just good to give an idea of which teams have “done better” than others in theyr whole history, but are completely crappy if you are trying understand and compare the CURRENT valour of teams for the coming WC, that’s why many people say that Fifa ranking is a bullshit… And believe me this has nothing to do with the fact that Usa is 4th, as i said, the whole ranking system is a bullshit!

Posted from Italy

By Herbie | May 14th, 2006 at 8:11 am

Zero, you’re a bit mistaken about how the rankings are compiled. Here are pretty good explanations for the two systems.
ELO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_football_rating
FIFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings

Posted from United Kingdom

By bossimo | May 14th, 2006 at 2:02 pm

Happy to see your coming down to earth Zero, though I think we’re still waiting for you to touch down (provided, of course, you aren’t deliberately prodding us, which I suppse is just fine too).

Everyone knows the FIFA rankings are absurd. But the amazing thing about the Elo rankings is not that they’re bullshit for going all the way back to 1867. Yes, we’d all like to see rankings heavily waited toward the present, but what amazes me is just how good these rankings are for a purely quantitative analysis. Had never seen them before, thanks for the link Herbie. Ponder this top 20 from Elo for a moment:

1. Brazil
2. Netherlands
3. England
4. Spain
5. Czechia
6. France
7. Italy
8. Argentina
9. Portugal
10. Denmark
11. Germany
12. Sweden
13. Romania
14. Mexico
15. United States

Headed into this world cup, I’d argue that just two shift make this top 15 just about as good as you could hope to get one of these rankings:

1. Swap Argentina and Chech Repulic (is “Chechia” acceptable?)
2. Replace Romania with USA and thereby moving Croatia up one notch to round out the top 15:

1. Brazil
2. Netherlands
3. England
4. Spain
5. Argentina
6. France
7. Italy
8. Czechia
9. Portugal
10. Denmark
11. Germany
12. Sweden
13. United States
14. Mexico
15. Croatia

Seamus, Imp … uh, Massimo… care to weigh in?

Posted from United States

By Rick | May 15th, 2006 at 9:05 am

Here’s my 2 cents:

1. Brazil
2. Argentina
3. Netherlands
4. England
4. Spain
6. France
7. Italy
8. Czech Republic
9. Portugal
11. Germany
12. United States
13. Mexico
14. Denmark
15. Sweden
16. Croatia

I don’t really know all that much about the current state of the first teams fro Denmark or Sweden, but I would say that the USA is, at this point, more than one place better than Mexico. Still, I like this list the best.

Posted from United States

By Todd Utah | May 15th, 2006 at 2:56 pm

Here is my list USA Argentina and then the rest. Look these rankings mean nothing look how much they helped us on the draw? It is really hard to rank nations because they dont play each other enough and the only games where the teams play their best players are the qualifying tournaments. That is why I like what South America does with the open format. We know that Argentina and Brasil tied for the lead so they are the best in South America. The european system in pathetic and leaves to many good teams out. At the end you dont know who the best teams even are. After the qualifying the teams should be seeded from 1 to 32 and the match ups done by seeding 1 to 8 9 to 16 17 to 24 and 25 to 32. That way you wont get these easy and hard groups. These groups of the death are ridiculous. Finally dont count the friendlies in the ranking because they normally dont represent the countries best 11.

Posted from United States

By John Leenhouwers | May 18th, 2006 at 12:27 am

You can’t bank on your ranking. A few bad moments in the tournement and your out. It’s happend to the best. Even Brazil, France, Italy, Holland and of course Spain every time. Only the Germans seem to know how to always be a part of it. It’s time a so called nobody nation like what happened to Greece in Europe goes all the way to show how random the whole thing is. The US could be the one. But then again are they a nobody nation?!

Posted from United States

By Rohith | May 19th, 2006 at 9:25 am

1.Argentina
2.Brazil
3.italy

Posted from India

By Rohith | May 19th, 2006 at 9:28 am

In my side Argentina will win the World Cup. The 2nd place is for Brazil. the 3rd is Italy

Posted from India

By Rohith Krishnan | May 19th, 2006 at 9:32 am

any like Argentina please send mails to rohithkrishnan@gnail.com
Argentina’s shoryform is Arg, India is IND and do u kmow the short name of Brazil is Bra.

Posted from India

By Phil Crowley | May 30th, 2006 at 12:15 pm

I personally think based on perfomrances over the last eight years, with powerful players like Pavel Nedved, Tomas Rosicky, Milan Baroš, and the best goalkeeper in the world between their goalposts (the undeniably impressive Petr Cech), and other household names like Smicer, Koller and Polak on ther world cup squad list, are arguably (but not undeniably) the best team in europe, what misleads people is the relatively little press and money these people take. For example Nedved is the rock of Juventus, arguably the whole team was organised around him. Whereas, I do not think, on even the best of days, that the US could give any of the other teams in the top ten of either rankings a good match. Looking at the teams that left in the quarer finals of the latest gold cup, Costa Rica, Jamaca, Panama are you trying to say that these teams are equal to teams that made it as far in the European Championships, like France, England and Sweden (featuring Zlatan Ibrahomivic, if you don’t know who he is, shame on you for voicing an opinion on football) I think the while the weakest teams from any confederation are all equally weak, the strongest teams from CONMEBOL, and UEFA far surpass the strongest teams of CONCACAF, OFC, and AFC, with CAF lying between the two groups in standards.

Posted from United States

By Phil Crowley | May 30th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

I am not in the united states… stupid machine

Posted from United States

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Posted from United States

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