As promised in the first part (well, a week later than promised actually, sorry about that), here's how the post-July 2010 rankings would be have been affected if the correct confederation weightings had been used.
UEFA and CONCACAF teams would be ranked lower, while AFC teams would be ranked higher.
August 2010
No changes.
September 2010
Togo would be 4 places higher - 83rd instead of 87th.
Within the top 50: Turkey (22nd), Cameroon (38th) and Montenegro (41st) would all be one place lower. No teams would be ranked higher, since these teams dropped from being tied with Switzerland, Czech Republic and Colombia.
October 2010
Within the top 50: Australia (20th), Japan (29th) and Algeria (32nd) would all be one place higher, with the Republic of Ireland (33rd) being one place lower. Australia would be tied with Slovakia, Japan with Turkey.
November 2010
Within the top 50: Russia (12th) and Colombia (46th) would both be one place higher, with France (22nd), Lithuania (47th) and Guinea (48th) one place lower. Russia moved level with Norway, while Colombia moved up from the tie with Lithuania. France dropped from the tie with Switzerland.
December 2010
Qatar (111th) would be ranked 3 places higher. Cuba (66th) and Grenada (98th) would be ranked 4 places lower. Jamaica (61st) would be 3 places lower.
Within the top 50: Korea Republic (39th) would be one place higher, with France (19th) - one place lower. Korea Republic move level with Gabon, while France drop from a tie with USA.
In January 2011, we'll see how the post-July 2006 rankings would have looked like without the weightings.
This is my last post for 2010. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Okay, see you in the New Year! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you too!
ReplyDeleteHey Edgar, are you reading? I have a request for you please. And also an idea for a future article which I think would make very interesting reading, if you threw in more teams than my request.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is simple. What if a team played no friendlies, only competitive matches. Imagine if exactly 4 years ago, a representative of the English FA came out and read a statement:
"It has come to our attention from an individual known as Lorric that playing International friendlies has a detrimental effect on a team's FIFA World Ranking, no matter the result. Therefore, we at England have a cunning plan. Ten English players, and a random foreigner start the match. This voids the match from being an official International friendly, you see. The foreigner is then substituted immediately with an English player. England finishes the match, England gets top seeded for everything. Clever eh? I'm a genius!"
Everyone on any discussion about rankings not on this site of yours moans about England being 6th. How many points would England have with no friendlies? Even with England having done well at friendlies.
I will leave it up to you if you want to include anyone else, or even take my request. But I'm sure there are some teams who jump dozens of places had they gamed the system for the last 4 years.
@Lorric
ReplyDeleteI wrote such a post in 2007 (see here). In Romanian though... so you should use an online translator.
In December 2010, without friendlies, England's total would be 1615.
@ Edgar
ReplyDeleteHa ha, wow! over 400pt increase! England would be well clear in 3rd now.
I suppose with everyone playing friendlies there's no need to fix it, but it really is open to heavy exploitation. I can't imagine why no one has taken advantage of this. Even without my foreigner in the team idea, teams can play against B teams (if they are a lesser nation) the Catalan team or club teams if they need friendlies. I remember an England B team once took on and beat Albania's A team.
Romanian eh? Are you Romanian then? I wonder what your nationality is? If you are Romanian, I think they could really use your help right now!
I see from that table some teams made massive gains, well over 500pts for some!
If only they'd average friendlies separately from competitive matches and total them up together! If they did that, I'm sure the FIFA rankings would look much better, as well as being much fairer. Competitive matches would still dwarf friendlies in terms of value, and rightfully so, but friendlies would be worthwhile, not a detrimiment.
Thanks, Edgar :)
You're welcome.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't FAs take advantage? Well, various reasons. Lack of knowledge about the ranking formula is one of the reasons. Others simply don't care about the rankings, player development taking (rightfully so) precedence.
The Romanian FA are not interested. :)
They could still play friendlies, they only have to make at least 7 substitusinons...
ReplyDelete