FIFA rankings - why they are important and how to beat the system

[CanadianSoccerFan]

The CONCACAF ranking looks a lot more accurate than the FIFA ranking of CONCACAF teams.  Other than Curacao being too low, I have a hard time finding much wrong with it.

 

 

[Kent]

22 hours ago, Shway said:

So at this rate, it will benefit us for the 2023 Gold Cup?

Yes, if we can move into that top 4 before the 2023 Gold Cup draw that will be big for us. However, before that the 2022-23 Nations League would also use these CONCACAF rankings. According to wikipedia that competition is supposed to start in May of 2022, no word on when the draw would be yet. If we can win 4 games in June (big ask, but possible) and Honduras does nothing in the Nations League playoffs we might be able to overtake them. If not, we would definitely be within striking distance when the Octagonal rolls around.

P.S. Still working on trying to reverse engineer this CONCACAF ranking formula. Some stuff just doesn't make sense to me. I'm certain I won't get something very exact, but hopefully I can get it more accurate than what I have now, which is in the right neighborhood a third of the time, and wildly off the rest of the time.

[jtpc]

It looks like the FIFA rankings have been updated today. I've never seen the rankings listed to 2 decimal places before, so that seems to be new. No more rounding up or down I guess.

The current points for the top 10 in CONCACAF:

Mexico 1629.56
USA 1555.42
Jamaica 1432.65
Costa Rica 1423.40
Honduras 1361.21
El Salvador 1341.24
Canada 1340.56
Curaçao 1323.06
Panama 1321.97
Haiti 1290.62

We're now just 0.68 points behind El Salvador for 6th and 20.65 points behind Honduras for 5th.

Hopefully there are 4 victories in June to add to our total. 😀

Edited April 7, 2021 by jtpc

[Kent]

Since they went to the new ranking formula there have been a lot more teams tied in ranking, so I guess that's why they started showing the decimal places. More transparency if there happens to be a tie where a line is drawn for determining different pots for a draw or something.

If they were still rounding, Canada and El Salvador would be tied right now.

An insignificant but nice little thing is that all the CONCACAF teams ahead of Canada dropped points in these rankings, with the exception of the USA. Curacao and Panama both gained a little bit of ground on us (2 and 1 point respectively).

Now we just have to wait 2 months for more games.

[Kent]

I was just doing some reminiscing. We are ranked 7th in CONCACAF now. As recently as June 2017 we were ranked 15th in CONCACAF.

[Club Linesman]

The ELO ratings have us 4th in the region and trailing Costa Rica by only 3 spots.  We are 55th in the rankings and I think when we made the World Cup we were about 40th.  Things looking up.  Also they anticipate game results and we are overwhelming favourites for the two games in June.  I realize Suriname has changed but I think our boys should be favoured and are truly in the mix for 3rd in the region.

[jtpc]

It would be nice if the US defeated Honduras tomorrow in their Nations League Semifinal, bringing them back a bit from 1361 points, as we stand a really good chance to gain points this window and come up from 1340. If that happened, Honduras would still have a 3rd place match to try and get some points and they also have a friendly with Mexico after Nations League (which could also be good for us). If we could run the table with 4 wins this window, the points battle for 5th in CONCACAF could be really interesting by mid-June. Let's go CanMNT! 😀

[TGAA_Star]

In order for Canada to game the system, we would have to play a lot more friendly matches between now and 2022 in order to increase our world ranking/CONCACAF ranking

[Kent]

1 hour ago, jtpc said:

It would be nice if the US defeated Honduras tomorrow in their Nations League Semifinal, bringing them back a bit from 1361 points, as we stand a really good chance to gain points this window and come up from 1340. If that happened, Honduras would still have a 3rd place match to try and get some points and they also have a friendly with Mexico after Nations League (which could also be good for us). If we could run the table with 4 wins this window, the points battle for 5th in CONCACAF could be really interesting by mid-June. Let's go CanMNT! 😀

"Negative points in knockout stages of final competitions will not affect teams' ratings." I'm pretty sure the loser of the Nations League semi-finals won't lose points.

If we beat Aruba and Suriname I think we will get about 10 points total.

[Ruffian]

Are there any short term benefits for getting ahead of Honduras? World Cup qualifying doesn't depend on it anymore.

[Kent]

1 hour ago, Ruffian said:

Are there any short term benefits for getting ahead of Honduras? World Cup qualifying doesn't depend on it anymore.

No, just pride. I think the next time FIFA rankings have a chance of making a material impact on Canada in any way is if Canada qualifies for the World Cup, then maybe the rankings will be used for putting teams in pots for the World Cup draw? I'm not even sure about that.

And for the record, we are currently ranked 70th, and for the last World Cup the lowest ranked team that wasn't in the bottom pot had a ranking of 34, so we have a ways to go!

Edited June 2, 2021 by Kent

[red card]

Canada's ELO history from 1885. Peaked after winning Gold Cup. Now recovering from 2016 bottom.

 

[baulderdash77]

Things sure were super bleak for Canada Soccer about 6-7 years ago.  Those were a depressing time.  It’s crazy how big the transformation has been in the last few years.

From here out there is no “gaming the system”.  Just win games that matter- make the World Cup.  Top 4 finishes in the Gold Cup.  Top 4 finishes in the next CONCACAF League.  
 

With our team’s talent it’s just about winning.  Canada should ascend to 3rd in CONCACAF this cycle, no if ands or buts.

[jtpc]

Could one of our points gurus calculate how many points these 2 matches against Haiti might be worth? So far this window, it seems like we could have 10 more points in the bank (I saw a website that said 3.3 for defeating Aruba and 6.9 for defeating Suriname, but I can't find it now). That would put us around 1,350. Haiti could have close to 1,300 with their 2 wins. Since Haiti is ranked much higher than Suriname and Suriname got us around 7 points, I'm hoping these 2 matches could each be worth 10+ points.

[Kent]

7 minutes ago, jtpc said:

Could one of our points gurus calculate how many points these 2 matches against Haiti might be worth? So far this window, it seems like we could have 10 more points in the bank (I saw a website that said 3.3 for defeating Aruba and 6.9 for defeating Suriname, but I can't find it now). That would put us around 1,350. Haiti could have close to 1,300 with their 2 wins. Since Haiti is ranked much higher than Suriname and Suriname got us around 7 points, I'm hoping these 2 matches could each be worth 10+ points.

This is probably the website you are referring to. http://football-ranking.com/calculate?view=scheduledMatch

That website doesn't have the Haiti match on it yet though. I'm calculating each game to be about 11.3 points for a win, -1.2 for a draw, and -13.7 for a loss.

[TOCanada115]

If we win both games, how far would we move up the Fifa rankings roughly?

[Kent]

Roughly 32 points, which would get us to around 1372. If everyone else stays in the same spot that would move us from 70th to 63rd, passing El Salvador, Iraq, Honduras, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Montenegro, and Slovenia.

Note that the 2 CONCACAF countries I just listed should be gaining points. Honduras beat Costa Rica in a shootout, and El Salvador have won 2 games so far, with 2 more against Saint Kitts coming up. We might pass El Salvador since they were less than 1 point ahead of us and our opponents overall are stronger than theirs (Aruba > USVI, Suriname < Antigua, Haiti > Saint Kitts).

[Club Linesman]

Just looked at the ELO Rankings and we are now tied with Costa Rica for 3rd in Concacaf and 52nd overall.  This falls in line with what many of us believe/hope.  2 victories vs Haiti and we will leave CR behind and fall into 3rd behind Mexico and the USA. 14th and 22nd.  
Haiti is ranked 68th so both teams are punching above their FIFA rankings.  While the games will be somewhat competitive, we should win both and move on up!

[maplebanana]

On 6/9/2021 at 8:51 AM, jtpc said:

Could one of our points gurus calculate how many points these 2 matches against Haiti might be worth? So far this window, it seems like we could have 10 more points in the bank (I saw a website that said 3.3 for defeating Aruba and 6.9 for defeating Suriname, but I can't find it now). That would put us around 1,350. Haiti could have close to 1,300 with their 2 wins. Since Haiti is ranked much higher than Suriname and Suriname got us around 7 points, I'm hoping these 2 matches could each be worth 10+ points.

 

On 6/9/2021 at 9:05 AM, Kent said:

This is probably the website you are referring to. http://football-ranking.com/calculate?view=scheduledMatch

That website doesn't have the Haiti match on it yet though. I'm calculating each game to be about 11.3 points for a win, -1.2 for a draw, and -13.7 for a loss.

 

I made these plots a while back when we were scrambling to see how to get into the Hex based on FIFA rankings. You can look up all the scenarios for a win, draw, or loss if you know the ranking points of each opponent and Canada. In Haiti's case they are -50 on the x-axis. USA (for upcoming GC) is +215. Kent's calculation is correct.

Win:

Draw:

Loss:

 

 

[Kent]

Rankings for the World Cup finals draw were mentioned in the Gold Cup thread and it got me on this topic.

I just looked at the ranking schedule. The next rankings don't come out until August 12th . I'd like to see the numbers officially ASAP.

Luckily, this site gives us that. I'm not sure why FIFA can't give us this data on the fly as well. http://football-ranking.com/rankByConfederation?zone=CONCACAF&period=

Things to note. OneSoccer (I believe) and TSN (for sure) have been showing the teams that are in the Oct ordered by their FIFA ranking. Canada is 7th in that list. With the up to date numbers linked above, we are 5th (ahead of Honduras and El Salvador, in addition to Panama).

Last World Cup the lowest ranked team in Pot 3 (i.e. not the bottom pot) was Iran ranked 34th. The current 34th ranked team has 1485 points. We are currently at 1373 points. If we beat USA in the Gold Cup group stage we will get around 24 points (if we lose we lose about 10 points, and a draw would get us around 6 points. That's really the only Gold Cup match we can look ahead to at this point, since we don't have the 4th team in our group yet, and the other is Martinique who of course doesn't affect our ranking.

[baulderdash77]

So the pro-forma ranking for Canada right now is 62nd in the world, jumping up 8 spots and passing El Salvador and Honduras as well as 5th in CONCACAF.

This will be our highest rating since 2012 when we briefly made it to 60th.  We last cracked the top 50 in 1997 but I legitimately think we will finish 2021 in the top 50 with a Gold Cup Semi or better and WCQ.  This is a big year for us.

 

[Club Linesman]

Awesome!  Just for shitz and giggles we are now 43 in ELO rankings.  Scotland for comparison is 49. We are 3rd in Concacaf.  Let’s hope the rankings are a truer indication of our level!

[Yoginess]

17 minutes ago, Club Linesman said:

Awesome!  Just for shitz and giggles we are now 43 in ELO rankings.  Scotland for comparison is 49. We are 3rd in Concacaf.  Let’s hope the rankings are a truer indication of our level!

I just saw this! Nice to see some good performances reflected in the rankings. 

EDIT: While FIFA has us a full 10 spots behind some Burkina Faso, which I just learned was a West African country..

Edited June 16, 2021 by Yoginess

[ardsa]

10 hours ago, Kent said:

Luckily, this site gives us that. I'm not sure why FIFA can't give us this data on the fly as well. http://football-ranking.com/rankByConfederation?zone=CONCACAF&period=

That site has some bad calculations. It has Honduras and Mexico losing points for knockout round of Nations League.  My reading is there should be no loss of points during Knock Out rounds of finals competitions.

Further, it is not calculating the points correctly for penalty shoot-out (W = 0.75, L = 0.5).

That said it seems to have Canada's points correct. + 32 points so far in this ranking window is the best in the world (by their flawed calculations that is). Teams that do well in Euro and Copa America will surely surpass our point gains by  the August rankings date.

[CanadianSoccerFan]

Picking up the FIFA ranking discussion here to avoid hijacking the Phonsie thread.

I dug up the article I read a few years ago that dissects the core problem with the new ranking.  Essentially, teams do not move because the points never drop off and the increase/decrease in points resulting from a match are too small to make any material difference. 

The teams that were on a hot run of form right before the ranking change (Wales, Jamaica etc.) will benefit from this forever.  

http://www.weglobalfootball.com/2018/06/12/fifas-new-elo-rankings/

This excerpt drives home the absurdity:

There’s a 750 point gap between #1 and #28. Slovakia would have to beat Germany 20 times in a row just to pass them in the rankings. And that’s just if it’s a World Cup Qualifier. If it’s in friendlies, Slovakia would have to beat Germany 50 times to pass them. Slovakia could beat Germany by 10 goals on the road 40 times in a row and Germany would be ranked higher.