Women's World Ranking - June 08 - 9th

[CoachRich]

FIFA/Coca-Cola Women's World Ranking

http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/lastranking/gender=f/fullranking.html

1 USA 2200 0 -7

2 Germany 2174 0 1

3 Sweden 2087 0 3

4 Brazil 2082 0 0

5 Norway 2043 0 1

6 Korea DPR 2038 0 15

7 Denmark 2000 1 4

8 France 1999 -1 1

9 Canada 1960 0 3

10 Japan 1957 0 1

11 England 1940 0 -5

12 Australia 1923 0 -6

13 Italy 1915 0 1

14 China PR 1891 0 -2

15 Russia 1890 0 0

16 Ukraine 1857 1 9

17 Finland 1854 -1 -6

18 Iceland 1827 1 15

19 Spain 1819 2 14

20 Netherlands 1818 -2 -5

21 Czech Republic 1806 -1 -2

22 Mexico 1774 0 -3

23 Korea Republic 1765 2 58

24 New Zealand 1724 -1 0

25 Nigeria 1718 -1 0

[AlanDouglas]

The disastrous results by the WNT continue to be felt, as Canada gains three rating points. Wow, it really is a mess isn't it? Thank heaven for objective measures of success, so we can see just how dire the situation is.

I think it is pretty clear that we should just give up, disband all soccer programs, and turn to a real Canadian sport like... curling. Advantages of curling are:

- Canada is the world leader

- Played with tremendous sportsmanship; no cheating; players self-referee

- Coaches just work quietly in the background, and are neither celebrated nor demonized

- Coaches are hired by the players, not the other way around

- National teams are chosen purely on results

- TV friendly sport

- Great social scene

- No hooligans

[fan]

The move is positive but in perspective its not remarkable.

There are really only 10 teams and only the top five are excellent teams.

Not comparable to the Mens rankings simply because the history is too short and

the pool of players is extremely small comparably.

It would be a disaster if Canada did not make the top ten of a ten team league.

I also feel that we will see a greater amount of players in womens soccer at this level

and much better teams in the future. Given the state of affairs in the CSA I dont see us going up

in the future this might be are best.

The FIFA rankings have been anything but objective in the past.

Given the difficulty in assessing such a weak group that only has parity because

it is in its infancy as a sport I cant find much fault with these rankings.

[AlanDouglas]

The FIFA men's rankings are a joke. They use a bunch of made-up formulae with no scientific or statistical vailidity. Anybody with any understanding of statisical ranking theory will tell you that you can safely ignore the men's rankings.

The women's rankings are the complete opposite. They are done using a system similar to the Elo method used in chess. This is a scientifically valid method, and if true ratings can actually be said to exist, then the women's ratings are mathematically guaranteed to converge on the true ratings given enough results.

I'm not sure what ranking method they use in curling. I should look into that. Curling does use the Page Playoff System, which I think is a really clever way to give top ranked teams an advantage in the playoffs without having them play fewer games like you do with byes.

[Vic]

We tie Australian jr and basically go shotless against less than half their team adult side. The Australians also play the USA on the road in the States and score 6 goals coming away 4-5 and 2-3 by playing smart attacking football. We grace by Costa Rica and Mexico 1-0, go shotless for 75 minutes against the US, and follow it up with a 0-6 blowout from them. Australia goes down 6, we go up 3.

And you think the men's rankings are a joke?

[AlanDouglas]

Yes, the FIFA men's rankings are a joke. The women's are done properly.

The women's rating system is a simple system, as most are, and doesn't take into account any of the second and third order factors that you just rattled off. It only cares about win, loss, or tie, and home or away. People who try to make more complex models usually just manage to screw it up, unless they really know their math and probability theory. The math works best if you keep things simple.

As for curling, while they don't describe the method used, from what they do say and the way the ratings are distributed, I suspect that they are just more made up rubbish formulae. Too bad. But at least Canada is well out in front in both the men's and women's ratings.

[jpg75]

What a load o' crap. Germany is the best women's team on the planet at the moment. period. Here's my ranking:

1 Germany

2 Brazil

3 USA

4 Sweden

5 Norway

6 N. Korea

7 China

8 Australia

9 Canada

Yes, i still rate the Chinese. I think they'll surprise at the Olympics...look, we're #9 great! we've been stuck there for years now, we're capable of improving and we need to improve. This team can make it to the Top 5 if we start playing the game the right way. ie. possession instead of aimless kick and chase.

[AlanDouglas]

Exactly, we are now stuck at #9. Before that we were briefly stuck at #10, and before that we were stuck bouncing between #11 and #12. For a while we were even stuck at #13. We are always stuck with no progress being made. I blame the CSA.

The only sensible thing to do is switch to curling.

One thing about curling I forgot to mention is that it probably has the greatest gender parity of any team sport. The top women curlers have shown they can compete at a pretty high level compared to the men. They lack the big weight game obviously, but otherwise are pretty solid.

Oh but wait. I just realised that curling has the same problem! Canada have been stuck at #1 in men's and women's curling since pretty much the beginning of time, with no improvement. Curses. What do we do now?

[jpg75]

Can the sarcasm you patronizing sychophant.

Before Pellerud we were up around 15th, since then we've been knocking on the Top 10 door, but haven't barged in yet. Canada has had the same relative strength compared to the rest of the world for atleast 5-6 years. Just because a semi-useless ranking system has us slowly creeping up from 13th to 9th over a 5 year period doesn't mean actual progress is being made. In fact you could argue that based on recent results we're actually going backwards compared to the rest of the world. Perhaps we should have been up at 9th back in 2003 and up to 13th now. There really isn't much to distinguish us from the Japs, English, French and Danes.

[AlanDouglas]

So to summarise, you say it doesn't mean anything just because our ranking has gone up, yet your complaint was that our ranking hasn't gone up. Why complain about something if you think it meaningless?

You also say we haven't made it into the Top 10, yet your very own ranking put us at #9.

Is there any more contradictory nonsense you wish to illuminate us with?

Also, "Japs"?! What happened -- you just fall out of a WWII movie?

[Vic]

I believe his points expressed relatively clearly were the ranking system and your attitude are far from perfect.

Moderator posting from USA forum with double the V's traffic this week:

"FIFA's women's rankings have always been weak and not the most accurate indicator to say the least. Which is why most of us don't even bother discussing them anymore.

And yes, Germany may have won the WWC, but that doesn't gurantee them a No. 1 spot, according to FIFA. Just ask Norway ... One gold, one WWC and they've never been ranked as No. 1."

[jpg75]

quote:Originally posted by AlanDouglas

So to summarise, you say it doesn't mean anything just because our ranking has gone up, yet your complaint was that our ranking hasn't gone up. Why complain about something if you think it meaningless?

I never had a complaint, don't know where you got that one. I was pointing out that #9 is nothing to be ecstatic about. This team can do much better.

quote:]Originally posted by AlanDouglas

You also say we haven't made it into the Top 10, yet your very own ranking put us at #9.

I meant to write Top 5, which is consistent with what i wrote in my other post.

[Cheeta]

You guys would know better than I, of the current 8 teams ahead of Canada in the rankings has the WNT ever beat any of them over the past decade and if so when and where?

Not a shot. Just curious. Find those sorts of stats interesting. Knowing how your record stacks up against your real opponents along with all the other data.

[Vic]

It's kind of difficult to tell accurately because unlike men's there is a bigger difference between friendlies and WWC and OLY tournament games. The results tend to be more random based on who is available and who is training/peaking at the moment. The list below is also not complete, as the CSA does not list all the games on their list of all fixtures (for example Pan Am results, I added Brazil).

But I would agree that there are performance clusters in the women's game:

a) Top 5

6-15

c) 15-30

d) 30+

1 USA

0-6 2008

1-1 2008

0-4 2008

2-6 2007

1-2 2006

0-1 2006

0-2 2006

0-2 2005

0-1 2004

0-2 2004

1-3 2003

1-6 2003

1-2 2002

0-1 2001

2-2 2001

3-1 2000

1-1 2000

1-4 2000

1-9 2000

0-4 2000

2 Germany

3-4 2005

1-3 2005

2-3 2005

1-3 2005

1-4 2003

1-7 2001

0-3 2001

1-2 1994

3 Sweden

4-2 2006

1-3 2005

1-3 2001

1-2 2003

2-5 2001

1-2 1994

0-3 1994

0-1 1988

0-2 1987

4 Brazil

0-7 2007

5 Norway

1-2 2007

0-3 2005

2-2 2002

1-9 2001

1-7 1999

0-7 1995

0-1 1990

6 Korea DPR

?

7 Denmark

3-4 2005

0-2 1996

8 France

0-0 2008

2-2 2006

1-0 2006

2-0 2005

2-0 2002

0-1 1995

[Vic]

i.e. we are 50/50 with #10-#14:

10 Japan

0-0 2007

0-3 2004

3-1 2003

2-3 2002

5-1 2000

11 England

4-0 2003

4-0 2003

2-3 1995

12 Australia

1-2 2008

2-2 2007

2-0 2003

0-1 2002

2-0 2002

0-0 2002

2-0 2000

13 Italy

3-2 2006

2-1 2006

14 China

0-0 2008

1-2 2007

1-3 2007

1-1 2006

0-0 2006

1-2 2004

1-0 2003

1-2 2000

2-3 2000

2-2 2000

[Vic]

Here are the 2007 & 2008 results against the top 15 teams in the world:

W-T-L (+/-)

0-1-3 -14 #1 USA

0-0-1 -7 #4 Brazil

0-0-1 -1 #5 Norway

0-1-0 +0 #8 France

0-1-0 +0 #10 Japan

0-1-1 -1 #12 Australia

0-1-2 -3 #14 China

- half the games to teams ranked lower than us

- 5 pts out of a possible 39

[AlanDouglas]

Interesting stats Vic. FYI, you can access full fixture lists for all countries on the FIFA website. Go to the rankings section, click Fixtures and Results and then chose Womens. You can also just click on a country, click Fixtures and Results and then in the URL where it says "gender=m" change it to "gender=f".

I haven't cross referenced your figures or anything, but I know that FIFA does not count the closed door scrimmage tie against Australia, but does include the 3-0 win over Japan in Cyprus a few months ago that you may have missed.

These results are obviously not good, but I would keep in mind that there is not a single home game among them, and most of the really bad results are road friendlies, which for my money are the most meaningless of international matches (if there is nothing on the line but pride, then the home team has a huge advantage). Games in sanctioned tournaments are what really matter, and neutral site friendlies aren't bad indicators, because at least the teams are on equal footing.

I think the lack of home games has had the effect of eating away at the team's confidence. Playing and losing all these road friendlies has to wear you down over time. With home games, you have a much better chance of getting a positive result and building back some confidence. Beating up on minnnows, which Canada does pretty well, is just not the same.

So I blame the lack of funding. A change of coach and playing style will improve things temporarily, because confidence-wise you are kind of getting a fresh start. And obviously a run of good results would do the same. But unless we get more home games, we're eventually going to be back to where we are.

[superfan]

Thank you Vic, that really helps put things in perspective. I hope you cc'd Richard and mini me, err Pellerud.

[fan]

quote:Originally posted by fan

The move is positive but in perspective its not remarkable.

There are really only 10 teams and only the top five are excellent teams.

Not comparable to the Mens rankings simply because the history is too short and

the pool of players is extremely small comparably.

It would be a disaster if Canada did not make the top ten of a ten team league.

I also feel that we will see a greater amount of players in womens soccer at this level

and much better teams in the future. Given the state of affairs in the CSA I dont see us going up

in the future this might be are best.

The FIFA rankings have been anything but objective in the past.

Given the difficulty in assessing such a weak group that only has parity because

it is in its infancy as a sport I cant find much fault with these rankings.

I agree jpg75 Germany is easily the best and also China will be there as well.

As stated the ranking is actually moot. Canada is second last in a ten team league. You can flip stats around until your blue in the face but Canada has not won anything to be proud of or beaten anyone significant.

Some of our stars will emerge and we may even surprise in the Olympics, lets all hope so but no relatively sane Canadian fan has seen a positive progress in the last year or so.

Canada will drop dramatically when the league has 20 teams of high caliber instead of five in the next five years or so. The same CSA and probably Pellerud will be directly involved at that time too, so its all over.

All I am doing from now on is focus on the individual players skills and their careers, the team is unfortunately likely to get worse.