New FIFA Rankings (July 2012)

[Matra2]

For the first time since FIFA rankings were compiled Brazil has dropped out of the top 10. According to Wikipedia:

Under the existing system, rankings are based on a team's performance over the last four years, with more recent results and more significant matches being more heavily weighted to help reflect the current competitive state of a team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings

As of July 2012 here are the world's top 10 international teams:

1) Spain
2) Germany
3) Uruguay
4) England
5) Portugal
6) Italy
7) Argentina
8) The Netherlands
9) Croatia
10)Denmark

Brazil is 11, just ahead of Greece.

Other noteworthy teams - France #14, Ivory Coast #16 - the top African country (not counting England), Mexico #19.

Meanwhile the more multiracial USA team under Jurgen Klinsman has dropped to its lowest ranking since 1993 - #36. (Note: that was before the World Cup was held in the US, part of the idea of which was to boost the sport in the country. So it would appear that you are going backwards).

It should be noted that there is no South American championship (Copa America) in 2012. That was held this time last summer.

http://aol.sportingnews.com/soccer/story/2012-07-04/usmnt-fifa-rankings-top-50-spain-euro-cup

 

[Liverlips]

England #4!!!

Who was making that ranking?

 

[backrow]

i don't get that either, how can they be 4th??? what have they accomplished in last, i dunno, five decades?

 

[Matra2]

The high England ranking jumped out at me too but based on how FIFA calculates these things it is correct. England did not lose any qualifying matches. They did not lose at Euro 2012 other than in penalties and under the system a loss or win in penalties doesn't count as much as a straight win/loss. Friendlies also count, though not for as much.

Here's an explanation of the method used:

http://www.ussoccerdaily.com/2010/04/fifa-rankings-explained.html

That's the best single page explanation I could find.

 

[Matra2]

what have they accomplished in last, i dunno, five decades?

Only the last four years count. England dominated their qualifying groups for both South Africa 2010 and Ukraine 2012. Their only loss that I'm aware of was against highly ranked Germany in the second round in 2010. The rank of the team beating you also is taken under consideration in the calculation as explained in the link in the above post.

 

[Europe]

Only the last four years count. England dominated their qualifying groups for both South Africa 2010 and Ukraine 2012. Their only loss that I'm aware of was against highly ranked Germany in the second round in 2010. The rank of the team beating you also is taken under consideration in the calculation as explained in the link in the above post.

They also beat Spain in a friendly. They beat Croatia twice in 2010 WC qualifying. They made it to the final 8 of the Euros. They beat Denmark a top 10 team. They lost 3-2 to the dutch, a top team. The point is other teams have worse records. They aren't the 4th best now, if you took a snapshot, but that is not how it works. I would say the top 8-10 teams fluctuate and there really isn't a 3rd or 4th best etc..

The English press has an article on how far England have fallen. They haven't fallen anywhere. Spain is a great team. Italy was trounced by them. England had a chance to win vs Italy, which is how they played the game. If they had Wilshere , Barry and Lampard and got rid of Young and Welbeck, they would have done better. At least they could have attacked more. They still tied.

But we must say that Spain did win a game on penalties this tourney and in the WC, so they easily could not have won these 2.


England's record the last 2 years:

http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/season=2012/teams/team=39/matches/index.html

 

[Porthos]

I always had issues with this rankings formula.

1. Team strength coefficient is plain wrong and very "politically correct" vs. lower ranked teams. It is calculated by the formula (200-rank)/100 which presumes that the team strenght is linear as you climb up the ranks and every team is exactly 0.5% stronger than the previous one. For example, Slovenia is ranked 34, while Spain ir ranked 1. So the coefficient is (200-1)/100=1.99 for Spain, (200-34)/100=1.66 for Slovenia. So Spain is only approximately 15% better than Slovenia! In reality I think the team strength is more similar to a square or even exponential curve, and Spain is probably 2 or 3 times stronger than Slovenia. At least - the number of points should be taken into consideration instead of the ranking. In the case above we would have Spain with 1691 points vs. Slovenia with 706. Now that's more like it! The coefficient could be for example points/1000, so a victory over Slovenia would have a coefficient of 0.706, while a win over Spain 1.691, 2.3 times more, not 1.15 (15%) times more.

2. Regional coefficient. The regional coefficient is redundant and should dissapear. It is already reflected in the team strength coefficient. If an Asian team is stronger than a South American team, so be it. There is no need for an additional Regional coefficient which will try to "correct" this as an anomaly.

 

[frederic38]

some teams take friendlies very seriously, but the south american teams are already known for not being obsessed with victory, so in a friendly match it's even worse
i don't think that they take into account the place where the match is played
for example france play their friendlies at home, and the south americans play more abroad
they care less about the match if it's not in front of their public

paraguay is 25th, behind colombia, but they are very hard to beat (lost only to spain in 2010 with an unfair refereeing in quarter finals of the world cup, and to uruguay in the final of the copa america)
they are top 8 in the world, at least
i would say top 4 when in a good day

this uruguayan generation is, in my opinion, finished

brazil is looking very bad these days, but they looked very bad in 2002 and won the world cup in the most dominant way i ever saw