FIFA rankings are a joke

I feel a Tui moment coming on. NZ ranked 6th in Oceania, Yeah Right!

 

 

 

 

The remainder of the zone have just been winning games in the SPG.

 

The early exit in the 2006 qualifiers mean NZ have not played a competitive match for three years. There have only been friendlies since then, which don't count as highly as real games.

 

The FIFA ranking takes into account games in the previous 4 years only. Explanation here:

 

 

 

For what it's worth, the rival ELO system has NZ 2nd to Australia in Oceania (they haven't moved the Aussies yet for some reason).

 

The World Football Elo Ratings are based on the Elo rating system, developed by Dr. Arpad Elo. This system is used by FIDE, the international chess federation, to rate chess players. In 1997 Bob Runyan adapted the Elo rating system to international football and posted the results on the Internet. He was also the first maintainer of the World Football Elo Ratings web site. The system was adapted to football by adding a weighting for the kind of match, an adjustment for the home team advantage, and an adjustment for goal difference in the match result.

These ratings take into account all international "A" matches for which results could be found. Ratings tend to converge on a team's true strength relative to its competitors after about 30 matches. Ratings for teams with fewer than 30 matches should be considered provisional.

NZ are ranked 74th in the world in that system and are top in Oceania.

 

The formula is reasonably sound with regard to its principles:

- All international "A" matches count

- Matches are rated according to importance scaled like 1 (friendly match) to 4 (World Cup)

- Opponent strength is taken in to account - Formula: [200 - Position] / 100

- The regional strength is taken in to account - with the region's strength being graded by using results of that region's teams in the last three world cups

- More recent results are weighted as more important - gradual decline in importance of results: 100%- 50% - 30% - 20%

- All matches within a year are considered

 

Previously, there was an 8 year period with complext calculations that picked the best 7 results in a year to use, with away teams given a bonus.

 

This is all fair enough and much of the criticism directed at FIFA comes from ignorance of how it is done - and ignorance of the revisions applied to the methodology in mid-2006.

 

The biggest single problem is where teams don't play many games. FIFA's formula encounters problems where teams play less than 5 games a year. There is no way to factor in potential without using subjective measures - and everyone's opinion differs!

 

Personally, I think the rankings work well for what they are intended for - an indication of comparative strength. FIFA do not solely use the rankings for any purpose. Recent World Cup seedings use a component of the rankings with the more important recent world cup appearances factored in.

 

I track the seeding calculations for the World Cup (sad, me) and was surprised to find that the rankings component altered what would have been the 8 seeds by only two teams. And this might surprise some people, but the rankings component allowed France and Argentina to be seeded instead of Korea and the USA. 2006 used the prior 2 world cups, whereas the 2002 used the prior 3. Using the prior 3 instead, and losing the rankings component would have allowed Argentina in as 8th seed instead of USA (who would slip to 9th).

 

In other words it was the rankings being partially factored in to the seedings that caused the seedings to seem more accurate to most people!

 

The ELO rating formula is really quite complex. Part of the problem with it however is that it tends to keep teams around the same sort of ranking. Developed for measuring chess, it used the basis that your value changes slowly over time. It uses all results ever. That is hard to defend. FIFA reduced their period of selection to just 4 years due to the justifiable criticism that after 8 years a nation tends to have quite a different team. ELO, because it is chess-originated and measuring  an individual, uses like I said the all-time list of results. It's kind of hard to justify the relevance of including the 1872 0-0 draw between England and Scotland (the first ever international) in calculating either team's 2007 ranking.

 

Interestingly it retains other elements that the FIFA ranking has abandoned due to the distorting effect i.e. home/away and goal difference, plus it weights friendlies as more important than FIFA (ratio of 1:3 instead of 1:3). Beyond that, it requires careful study.... more effort than even I'm willing to give.

 

Overall, I find the ELO system interesting but I think the FIFA system is the best I've seen - if a team isn't playing many games though, it will fall in the ratings (a la NZ) whereas the ELO system makes it harder to change position.

 

 

 

 

They are also key for Kiwis (and Aussies etc) in getting playing contracts in Europe when you don't have access to an EU passport.  If NZ's ranking was in top 50 it would be far easier for plays such as Hikey to play in the EU (he repeatedly had his work permits turned down after being offered contracts at clubs like Hull due to not having an EU passport and NZ's bad FIFA ranking).

 

Back to what I said earlier.  Regular competitive matches and not dickings at the hands of Brazil, Costa Rica etc.