FIFA rankings: England 4th best in the world

TomJuve wrote:I give up on the rankings, friendlies should count for nothing when ranking teams in my opinion. Many major International teams use friendlies to experiment with tactics, line-ups etc and end up losing to teams they could sweep aside if they had to.

England are the masters of friendlies but can't translate any of it to the big tournaments.

But if friendlies were to count for nothing, when else would a NT ever get a chance to do anything significant, if not climb the ranks a bit? I just don't get why friendlies get so much hate, and at the same time people expect a NT to do amazingly with the little time they already play together. The amount of criticism makes no sense.

barca 2011 wrote:

TomJuve wrote:I give up on the rankings, friendlies should count for nothing when ranking teams in my opinion. Many major International teams use friendlies to experiment with tactics, line-ups etc and end up losing to teams they could sweep aside if they had to.

England are the masters of friendlies but can't translate any of it to the big tournaments.

But if friendlies were to count for nothing, when else would a NT ever get a chance to do anything significant, if not climb the ranks a bit? I just don't get why friendlies get so much hate, and at the same time people expect a NT to do amazingly with the little time they already play together. The amount of criticism makes no sense.

That's just it, i'm not hating on friendlies. National teams need them to help experiment with how and who they play. But does that mean a friendly should have a bearing on rankings? No.

Not once have I said we should scrap friendlies or that I expect a National team to play well without having friendlies. You are taking points that I don't agree with and have never even said to argue against my own point.

"When else would a NT ever get a chance to do anything significant?" In the qualifiers for tournaments and the tournament itsself.

The way I see it is Friendlies are for sorting your team out and giving different players a chance to impress. Therefore smaller National teams tend to go all out to try and defeat the 'Big' Nations who end up using a much weaker starting XI.

The result of this is that you get a distorted ranking order where Nations who actually do well in tournaments and qualifiers fall behind Nations who don't.

Tom lets put it this way....

If Man City won the title in the PL by beating in the scrubs but losing against all the contenders would you put the achievement down?

Because that is basically what the Fifa Rankings are, they don't sure who the best teams are but the most consistent.

England are always there because they consistently win or draw and its reflective in the rankings.

I think the problem with the rankings is that people misunderstand how they are calculated and get the wrong idea.

Fifa rankings don't show who the best team is but they never did, its about results and England usually get results except when it really matters.

Seeing as those games where they do lose only happen 1 every couple of years they are not effected much in the rankings.

Mean while teams like Brazil and even Italy don't give 2 shits about the results in friendlies and come up big in the major tournaments.

I think there would be less uproar if everyone understood how it worked.

As i said its basically the league table of international football.

I agree with most of that Mole but the difference for me is that the league title is actually a trophy whereas winning all the friendlies in the world doesn't get you any trophies.

Nah Mole, Brazil cares about friendlies. Otherwise Menezes wouldn't have gotten fired over them. Brazil are so low because they are already qualified for the WC and therefore don't play WC qualifications so they can only play friendlies. Which means that even if they win they don't get as much points as everyone else.

Also it's not entirely based on current results. Past WC performance and historical trophies are taken into consideration as well.

I otherwise I agree with your assessment.

Meh... France drew Spain in WCQ in Spain, beat Italy in Italy and lost a close game to Germany. Undefeated in WCQ.

Yet, we lost 4 spots and fall to 17 in FIFA rankings lol.

It's completely flawed. There's not enough weighting towards official games. FIFA uses this as a way for teams to take friendlies seriously. Even if France beat Spain in Paris and end up first in the group, i could see us falling in the 3rd group for the WC draw lol.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Nah Mole, Brazil cares about friendlies. Otherwise Menezes wouldn't have gotten fired over them. Brazil are so low because they are already qualified for the WC and therefore don't play WC qualifications so they can only play friendlies. Which means that even if they win they don't get as much points as everyone else.

Also it's not entirely based on current results. Past WC performance and historical trophies are taken into consideration as well.

I otherwise I agree with your assessment.

I was just using that as an example, i assumed because they experimented a lot against England they don't usually care that much lol.

If you guys are interested in the method here it is:

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/r&a-wr/52/00/97/fs-590_10e_wrpoints.pdf

The weight of each game is friendly 1, WC qualifier 2.5, continental cup or confederation's cup 3.0, WC 4

Honestly i do agree the method is flawed but at the same time i don't think people should be surprised when you see England always so high considering they consistently win friendlies, qualifiers and usually get to quarter finals of major tournaments and lose on penalties lol.

As i said its about consistency and results not about quality and performances and usually as shit as we are in when we get to latter stages of tournaments we usually eat up points in these categories.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:If you guys are interested in the method here it is:

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/r&a-wr/52/00/97/fs-590_10e_wrpoints.pdf

The weight of each game is friendly 1, WC qualifier 2.5, continental cup or confederation's cup 3.0, WC 4

You see that's the problem. According to this chart... you get 3 points for winning a friendly (3pts for win x 1 coefficient). France's draw in Spain got 2.5 points (1 pt x 2.5 coefficient). After that, the other coefficient are not different enough. For example, Egypt has a team score of 180 and Spain 200. So if France had beat Egypt in the same competition, it would only get 50 more points, which is nothing.

They pulled these formulas straight out of their arse. You can see that non-UEFA zones have heavy influence because the gaps are very small.

What I find funny is that Germany is pretty high even though we actually don't care too much about friendlies and more often than not totally mess up in these.