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Canada steps aboard the FIFA rankings escalator...


rdroze

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... going up!

Right now we're all pretty bummed out about how Canada was guided quietly to the exit this Gold Cup. But despite the end result, one silver lining is that as far as the FIFA rankings are concerned, we are headed in the right direction.

As of the July 2009 rankings Canada sat 11th in CONCACAF, 92nd overall, with 360 points. I've tried to calculate what the trend of our FIFA points will be over the next few months, and I was happily surprised by what I saw.

I haven't tried doing an accurate estimate of the full rankings, since that depends on the results of all teams in the world, and Edgar over at www.football-rankings.info already does some of this better than I would. But the number of points is fairly simple to estimate, within a certain margin of error.

Here are my calculated results for Canada's FIFA ranking points, assuming we play no more games over the next few months. For reference I've added the world ranking that would have been obtained in July 2009 with that points value.


Month       Points   Jul09 Rank

Jul 2009     360        92

Aug 2009     494        67

Sep 2009     501        66

Oct 2009     559        58

Nov 2009     627        49

Dec 2009     690        43

So by December we should be ranked somewhere in the 40s, possibly near our highest rank ever, 40th. The biggest reason for the big jump is the fact that our very poor results from last year's WCQ effort will be much less important as they fade into the past. And of course, this year's decent Gold Cup results also help.

In all likelihood December will be a peak, since we have no more important games to play until Gold Cup 2011. Beyond playing a minimum of five friendlies in every 12 month period, which is important, friendlies do little to improve our ranking unless we start consistently defeating top-10 teams.

Anyway, all of this is probably meaningles, since the only really important ranking is where we are when the WCQ format is decided, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

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How little do friendlies matter:

- within or a month after they are played?

- 3 to 6 months after they're played?

- a year after they're played?

The thing is, how long can we expect our FIFA ranking to stay decently high into 2010? What can we do during 2010 to stop ourselves from dropping back down into the 90s?

Lastly, how, exactly, does CONCACAF use the FIFA ranking to decide WCQ groups?

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Friendlies, like any other game count at full value for 12 months before dropping in value each year (50% during the second year, 30% in the third and 20% in the fourth). The problem is that the maximum points we could get for winning a friendly is 552.23 the minimum is 127.5. For comparison we got 1032.75 for beating Jamaica in the Gold Cup. So right now any friendly we play is likely to actually hurt our ranking because it reduces the weighting placed on the Gold Cup results (the ranking are based on the average points of the games played with a minimum of 5 games counted). Really the best way for us to maintain a good ranking is to not play any games until next July and then play and win five friendlies when the Gold Cup games get devalued.

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To follow up on this since I have a spreadsheet with some of these calcs set up. If Canada plays no games before May 2011 we would have approx. 352 points in the FIFA rankings which is about where we were before the Gold Cup (roughly 92nd in the world). If we play and win 5 friendlies between May 2010 and April 2011 against the 75th ranked team we would have about 671 points, good for a ranking in the low 40s.

If we play and lose one friendly between now and the end of April 2010 we would drop about 37 points in the May 2011 rankings because it would average down the Gold Cup results. In order for a friendly to actually improve our ranking we would need to beat a team ranked in the top 10 in the world. Just goes to show the power of the Gold Cup multiplier in the rankings.

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quote:Originally posted by Tuscan

Lastly, how, exactly, does CONCACAF use the FIFA ranking to decide WCQ groups?

It's hard to say how exactly, since the qualification procedure seems to be different each time around.

Qualifying for WC2006 barely used the FIFA rankings at all. The seedings were done primarily based on the results from qualifying for WC2002.

Qualifying for WC2010 did use the FIFA rankings to divide up the teams into different groups based on their rankings. The top three teams in CONCACAF and the next three were seeded to avoid each other in the semi-final round of 12 teams. However, somewhat strangely, even though the final draw was held in November 2007, CONCACAF decided in advance to use the rankings as of May 2007. This greatly disadvantaged Canada, who were in the top six in CONCACAF from June through November 2007 (and beyond), and greatly benefitted <s>Jack Warner</s> Trinidad & Tobago, who were to fall well out of the top six by November.

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quote:Originally posted by rdroze

I haven't tried doing an accurate estimate of the full rankings, since that depends on the results of all teams in the world, and Edgar over at www.football-rankings.info already does some of this better than I would.

Thanks :)

quote:Originally posted by BrianW

In order for a friendly to actually improve our ranking we would need to beat a team ranked in the top 10 in the world. Just goes to show the power of the Gold Cup multiplier in the rankings.

Not quite true.

You need to play and win against:

a) an UEFA team ranked higher than 27th

OR

B) a CONMEBOL team ranked higher than 25th

OR

c) a CONCACAF/AFC/CAF/OFC team ranked higher than 12th

Looking at the July 2009 ranking, these countries fit the description:

Brazil

Spain

Netherlands

Italy

Germany

Russia

England

Argentina

France

Croatia

Greece

Switzerland

Serbia

Denmark

Portugal

Ukraine

Uruguay

Czech Republic

Paraguay

Bulgaria

Scotland

Israel

Romania

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