Many Brazilian fans are in uproar over Brazil's ranking. And it's about the get worse. Brazil have no competitive games before the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup.
Looking at the average points Brazil gained from friendlies in the last 4 years and using it for the last time frame, it looks like Brazil will have around 968 points in the June 2013 FIFA Ranking - the one released just before the start of the Confederations Cup. That's not good enough for the top 10, but it won't drop them out of the top 20.
All hosts drop in the FIFA rankings when the other teams play qualifiers. Just look at Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland and Ukraine. South Africa had some competitive matches as the 2010 WCQs were combined with the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Mr. Menezes will obviously come under pressure. There's already quite a campaign going on: "Fora Mano Menezes". How will CBF handle this?
Unfortunately people in Brazil have no knowledge of the math behind the rankings. Any defeat will be immediately connected to Brazil's poor ranking and used as a proof that the team is doing badly.
ReplyDeleteFIFA should really review it's points system...
@ Rafa
ReplyDeleteNo need here. Hosts you would think would claim back their losses because their hosts. Especially a big team, and especially when they're going to host two tournaments, the Confederations Cup and the World Cup.
But Brazil are doing badly anyway. This Mano Manezes has turned them into a shadow of their former selves. Every big team they've faced under Manezes they've lost to. They got dumped out of the Copa America in the quarter finals after an unimpressive group stage and have played uninspiring football in other friendlies. Host or not, right now I don't even see this Brazil side as the favourite to win their own World Cup. If they'd done better in the Copa America, and in their big team friendlies they wouldn't have this problem.
Hi Lorric
ReplyDeleteI've responded to that Croatia's-all-time-score-against-Germany/Italy discussion here:
http://www.football-rankings.info/2011/11/euro-2012-official-final-draw-seeding.html
Hi MV. The Italians fear you still, at least the fans do. Along with all Balkan sides.
ReplyDeleteThe extremes thing with personalities, do you do that? Are you going to come back and bite my head off? :)
Yes, you're right. During. I guess I just saw what I expected to see. I expect you mean the days of English football being top, not the carnage of WWII. Ah well, where's the fun of being on top all the time? You'll enjoy it more if you win. I still enjoy every win, even vs Andorra, though not many seem to share this.
"The Italians fear you still, at least the fans do."
ReplyDeleteIf that's from some forum discussion, I'd be interested in a link :D
"Along with all Balkan sides."
You mean the Italians fear all Balkan sides, or all Balkan sides fear Croatia?
The personality thing (which doesn't apply to me, a typical geek :D)...it wasn't meant in an irrationally-swinging-moods way, but...like, when people are friendly, they are REALLY friendly.
"I expect you mean the days of English football being top"
Of course :D
FIFA and other sport organizations are very weird and inconsistent when it comes to ...er..."country-continuity". Most count all the successes of Yugoslavia as Serbian (although the UN decided Yugoslavia has no successor state), even with individual sports, but then I find examples where Serbia isn't counted as a successor of Serbia-Montenegro, or FIFA counting the WW2-Croatia which wasn't even recognized, but divided into two halves between Germany and Italy, as a predecessor of the modern country (with a 46 year gap during which the land was in another dimension :?).
I know I'm completely unnecessarily bothered by this :)
@ MV
ReplyDeleteThat was from the World Cup Soccer Blog. You can go there and try and find it, but it's not easily memorable to me where it was, because Italy has several bloggers on that site, and like every 4 or 5 posts on there is about Italy. Very irritating when no one covers England on an English language site. England hasn't had a blogger for many months. They also fear Ireland as that's another team that has their number, and a recent 2-0 win in a freindly that was neutral but basically a home friendly, I think it was in an Italian district of Belgium or something like that.
I mean Italy fear all Balkan sides.
Hmmm. Well, they're certainly friendly and interesting in my experience. And Harry Redknapp speaks very highly of his Croat contingent at Tottenham.
I would class Yugoslavia as a completely seperate entity to it's breakaway parts. Serbia-Montenegro seemed a bit irritating that Serbia kept all the points and Montenegro got nothing. But I don't really see how they could have changed that. It would have been amusing if Montenegro had qualified for Euro 2012. Then they'd surely also be above Serbia in the rankings. And then we could say maybe it should have been Montenegro and Serbia, not Serbia and Montenegro :)