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Wednesday, March 11, 2020

UEFA qualification World Cup 2022 simulations (March 2020)

Last week the groups for the UEFA Nations League 2020 were drawn. Now that also that schedule of matches is known (6 match days to be played this Autumn) a first peek can be offered at the probabilities for each UEFA team to land in each pot for the draw of the UEFA qualification groups for the World Cup 2022. This draw will take place on November 29th and the teams will be seeded according to the FIFA November 2020 ranking. There will be 10 groups (5 of 5 teams and 5 of 6 teams) drawn.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

FIFA ranking: April 2020 preview results

Here are the scheduled matches counting for the FIFA April 2020 ranking with FIFA's Expected Home Win Probability (We) in % and the points exchanged in case of Win, Draw or Loss of the home team. In cases where matches can go to PSO, also the points exchanged when the home team wins (PSO-W) or loses (PSO-L) the penalty shoot-out are given.

The 1 or 0 before each match indicates if the match is included (1) or not (0) according to my inclusion-method.

FIFA ranking: April 2020 preview

Here are the minimum and maximum points for each team in the April 2020 ranking. FIFA will publish the ranking on April 9th.

Minimum and maximum points per team are determined with a small piece of software which calculates per match the minimum and maximum possible points for each participating team, given the minimum and maximum starting values of both teams before the match.

FIFA ranking: April 2020 probable results

Here are the probable results of all currently scheduled matches up to and including April 5th, used to calculate the April 2020 probable ranking. The results are generated using elo ratings. 
Also the already played matches since February 16th, (probably) counting for the April ranking, are presented.

FIFA ranking: April 2020 probable ranking

At last the waiting is over: a lot of competitive international matches will be played coming March window. Besides a fair amount of friendlies for (mostly) UEFA teams
- Europe decides via 8 semi-final and 4 final qualification play-offs the final four berths for EURO 2020, 
- Africa plays MD's 3 and 4 (of 6 in total) in CAF Nations Cup 2021 qualification,
- South America starts with the first two MD's in their long, 18 matchdays encompassing WC 2022 qualification,
- Asia continues with MD's 7 and 8 (of 10 in total) in their WC 2022 qualification,
- CONCACAF plays the first stage of home-and-away qualification semi-final play-offs, to be concluded in June with 4 final home-and-away play-offs to fill the final four berths for the Gold Cup 2021,
- and even Oceania sees some action (although still nothing is officially scheduled): a round-robin qualification tournament between the four lowest ranked teams to decide one berth in the OFC Nations Cup 2020, to be played in June in New Zealand. If everything goes as planned we will witness the first match of the Cook Islands since September 2015 and they will be incorporated in the FIFA ranking again. By the way, the format for OFC qualification for WC 2022 is still unclear, but first matches are expected to be played in September this year already. Anyway, it's awfully quiet with news from that distant region.

Here is the probable April 2020 ranking, to be published on April 9th.