Sepp Blatter, FIFA President
FIFA published its monthly world rankings for July, and it’s even more inexplicable than usual, reports Business Insider.
We’ll get into a full discussion about why the ranking formula is so bad in a little bit, but first check out just how weird these rankings came out:
Wales is 10th, and has the most FIFA ranking points of any team in the world in the past 12 months (note: Germany won the World Cup 12 months ago).
Argentina is ranked ahead of Germany, who beat them in the World Cup final.
Romania is 8th after not qualifying for the 2014 World Cup.
Portugal is 7th after not making it out of their group in the World Cup.
France is 22nd, one spot ahead of Iceland.
The United States, after beating Germany, the Netherlands, Guatemala, and Honduras in the last month, dropped seven spots to No. 34.
Here’s the top 10:
Argentina
Germany
Belgium
Colombia
Netherlands
Brazil
Portugal
Romania
England
Wales
So how does Wales — a country that has never qualified for a European championship and hasn’t made the World Cup since 1958 — end up 10th in the world?
FIFA’s ranking formula, is how. Let’s explain.
To determine this ranking, FIFA assigns a point value to every game a national team plays over the previous four years, with more recent games weighted more heavily. A game’s point value is made with four variables: match result, importance of match, strength of opponent, and strength of opponent’s confederation. FIFA multiplies these four factors together to find a team’s ranking points in a given game, then takes the average of a team’s points per game over the last four years to determine their total strength.
Multiply those four numbers together, and you get your FIFA ranking points for each game. To get a team’s ranking points for each year, FIFA takes the average of its points per game over all …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
