Amidst the Zidane commotion, it seems that most people have forgotten about the revised FIFA world rankings that were released on July 12.
FIFA have, under much criticism of their rankings system, revised and re-evaluated the factors that were taken into account when calculating country rankings. The main changes are:
Records of last four years will be taken into account (as opposed to last eight years under the previous system).
‘Goals scored’ and ‘home advantage’ will not be considered under the new system..
And from the site itself:
“Next year, the official FIFA website, FIFA.com, will offer an online tool that will make it possible to carry out hypothetical calculations for your team.”
Top 20 FIFA Rankings (July 2006)
1. Brazil
2. Italy
3. Argentina
4. France
5. England
6. Netherlands
7. Spain
8. Portugal
9. Germany
10. Czech Republic
11. Nigeria
12. Cameroon
13. Switzerland
14. Uruguay
15. Ukraine
16. USA
17. Denmark
18. Mexico
19. Paraguay
20. Cote d’Ivoire
Details Of Revised Rankings
Now for the information starved amongst you, here’s the full list of criteria used by FIFA. Each country is awarded points that accumulate over the year with the rankings revised each month. At the end of the year, the counter is reset and the cycle starts again.
Here’s the criteria:
Matches Considered: All international “A” matches
Result: Win-Draw-Defeat – 3 points -1 points — 0 points
Importance of match: 1 (friendly match) to 4 (FIFA World Cupâ„¢)
Strength of opponent: Position in world ranking (no. 1 = 2.00, no. 30 = 1.70, no. 118 = 0.82 etc.) Formula: [200 – Position] / 100
Regional strength: Based on results in last three FIFA World Cups (wins per confederation per match)
Period: Last four years, gradual decline in importance of results: 100%- 50% – 30% – 20%
Number of matches considered per year: Average points gained from all matches in last 12 months (minimum: 5 matches)
Number of goals: Not considered
Home and away matches: Not considered
Still not the easiest of nuts to crack, but if you have access to the data it shouldn’t be too hard to write a program that calculates these rankings automatically.
Do rankings really matter? I don’t really care actually 🙂 Pakistan is way down at #153 I think. I’ll stick to supporting England and Italy for now.
Sources
Full FIFA Rankings (July 2006)
Press Release Announcing Change In FIFA’s Ranking System
FIFA Ranking Procedures
Main FIFA Rankings Site
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