NZ FIFA Ranking

16 months on and NZ are up 47 places:

With the latest FIFA Rankings just released, NZ are now up to the heady heights of 112 equal (with El Salvador), ahead of former Asian champions Iraq.

It's now a long way back to the closest Oceania teams: Tahiti 149, New Caledonia 167, PNG 170, Vanuatu 179, Fiji 181, Solomons 188

https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-ta...

just went backwards again think it is now 122

Guess you don't get ranking points for spirit. 

No points for 5 defeats in a row either.

Also a result of the OFC Nations Cup results moving out of the 1-year window (100% weighting) into the 2-year window (50% weighting).

We're probably the wildest swingers in FIFA.

New FIFA Rankings released today -

All Whites down nine places to 122.

We are now below Luxembourg, Curacao, India, Faroes, Cape Verde, Palestine, St Kitts & Nevis, Philippines etc.

Peru up two places to tenth in world.

We're playing a top ten side now in the play-off !!!

http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-tab...

We suck.

Peru are closer to 35 and NZ are closer to 80. The gap is not so wide

On the ELO ratings which many people prefer, NZ are 73 and Peru 11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Football_Elo_R...

Probably a more accurate ranking of NZ than the FIFA rankings which has many mediocre countries above us.

Here  a side like Cape Verde are well below us at 93 whereas they are ahead of us on the FIFA rankings.

Does anyone believe that Peru are the 10/11/12th best country in the world?

Does anyone believe we are that bad that we are where we are??

Perhaps not that high but unbeaten in the last 12 months against teams in the hardest confederation speaks volume. 

I feel like this conversation comes up every time the FIFA rankings are released.

The general sports press in Peru dont particularly believe too much in the FIFA rankings themselves. They are aware how it works and how teams can climb up the rankings. 

It has helped that Peru have only lost 4 games (Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay) in the last 22 games they played in 2016 and 2017. I would say Peru is currently a top 30 team for sure. Top 10 is pushing things (same goes for Poland)

Just noticed that our FIFA ranking coincides with our population ranking, which is a neat curiosity. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_...

That's cool.

Our population was updated on that page yesterday... some people must really love keeping wikipedia up to date!

Even if we lose in Peru, guessing the draw in the first leg must get us into the top 100 surely!

Given the formula, we might get loads of points due to Peru's ranking... http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/procedure/men.html

I have it as...

1 point for the draw x 2.5 as it's a WC qualifier x 190 (because 200 - Peru's ranking) x 0.925 (CONMEBOL value 1, OFC 0.85, mean of them)

Total... 439.375. But then it;s averaged against all our games.

Draw doesn't do particularly much when points for that are averaged against other games, I guess we've played quite a few. The ranking page has a calculator that shows what happens based on possible scores of current matches.

Even if we draw again or lose on penalties, that takes our ranking points from 256 to 304, which would currently put us at 108th.

A win would take us to 377 points, which would currently be 96th.

A win on penalties would be somewhere inbetween those two.

If we lose, we go to 267 points, which is currently up 3 places to 119th.

Wait so we get less points for a draw against Peru than Brazil would? Seems fair.

What do we get for a 2 - 0 loss?

nothing

Still at 122nd according to the latest rankings :(

Peru down one place to 11th.

Just looked at the ranking system used for international rugby which seems actually seems a decent system. Would be interesting to see how football rankings would look if that was applied.

if you've got nothing to do - why not run the numbers?

One of the things to come out of the latest FIFA Council meeting is after the World Cup, they will be changing how FIFA rankings are done. Going off a new method more closely related to ELO 

(Sorry for the very English sided story, couldn't find a better one explaining it)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-cup/2018/06/10/f...

Here is the FIFA document on the proposed changes.

https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/revision-o...

The formula for the SUM algorithm is as follows: 

P = Pbefore + I * (W – We) 

Pbefore: Points before the match 

I: importance of match 

I= 05 Friendly matches played outside of International Match Calendar windows 

I= 10 Friendly matches played during International Match Calendar windows 

I= 15 Group phase matches of Nations League competitions 

I= 25 Play-off and final matches of Nations League competitions

I= 25 Qualification matches for Confederations final competitions and for FIFA World Cup final competitions

I= 35 Confederation final competition matches up until the QF stage 

I= 40 Confederation final competition matches from the QF stage onwards; all FIFA Confederations Cup matches 

I= 50 FIFA World Cup final competition matches up until QF stage 

I= 60 FIFA World Cup final competition matches from QF stage onwards 

W: result of the match 1 = win; 0.5 = draw; 0 = defeat 

We: expected result of the match We = 1 / 10(-dr/600) + 1) with dr=difference in ratings of the two playing teams, i.e. dr = [Pbefore of Team A – Pbefore of Team B]