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


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On 11/2/2021 at 7:02 PM, Neil R. said:

I'm not sure when the CONCACAF rankings will be used next, but here is the November update.

The FIFA rankings cannot be used for Nations League and Gold Cup as CONCACAF has 6 "countries" who do not have FIFA membership as they are not technically independent countries. - [ Bonaire, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin and Sint Maarten ]

Their attempts to gain FIFA membership was denied by CAS court.  Hence, 2 seperate rankings.  Even now, I have yet to figure out how their rankings are tabulated.  My emails to CONCACAF for this information has gone unanswered.

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7 hours ago, Jedi Ram said:

The FIFA rankings cannot be used for Nations League and Gold Cup as CONCACAF has 6 "countries" who do not have FIFA membership as they are not technically independent countries. - [ Bonaire, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin and Sint Maarten ]

Their attempts to gain FIFA membership was denied by CAS court.  Hence, 2 seperate rankings.  Even now, I have yet to figure out how their rankings are tabulated.  My emails to CONCACAF for this information has gone unanswered.

I didn't try to contact CONCACAF about the rankings (I've already been given the cold shoulder once or twice asking about rankings for Champions League/CONCACAF League), and yeah, it's impossible to reverse engineer it seems. They give us most of the formula, but then have some mystery variable which itself might be calculated from several other variables. It's frustrating, and I gave up a long time ago.

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  • 2 weeks later...
6 minutes ago, Kent said:

For those of us on a Pot 3 watch, 9 teams so far are officially qualified, including Qatar. They are all higher ranked than us in the unofficial live rankings (with the exception of Qatar, but as hosts they will go into Pot 1).

We are mathematically eligible until 24 spots are taken by teams ranking higher than us. :)

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1 hour ago, lamptern said:

We are mathematically eligible until 24 spots are taken by teams ranking higher than us. :)

Even that is too soon, because rankings are still changing until the time they take the rankings to use for the draw. For example, we still have 7 World Cup Qualifiers to accrue big points, while European teams have between 0 and 3 left.

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Just to get a sense of the unrealistically best case scenario, I just used the point calculator website to see how many points we would get for winning the rest of our World Cup Qualifiers to get a sense of our upper, upper, bound. That experiment yielded a total of 1534 points by the end of qualifying, which at this moment would place us 26th in the world.

Note that the points are higher than they would be if Canada somehow actually did win out the rest of the way, because it is using our current real world point total to calculate how many points we would get in the game being simulated. I have said in the past this doesn't really matter from one game to the next, but in this extreme scenario I'm sure it adds up, over 7 games, all of them wins. I'm not sure how many points difference it will make, and I'm not interested in taking the time to calculate such an unlikely scenario with any more accuracy.

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5 hours ago, Kent said:

Just to get a sense of the unrealistically best case scenario, I just used the point calculator website to see how many points we would get for winning the rest of our World Cup Qualifiers to get a sense of our upper, upper, bound. That experiment yielded a total of 1534 points by the end of qualifying, which at this moment would place us 26th in the world.

I know little about FIFA points, but your scenario suggests it'd take a miracle to get to Pot 3 - top 23. Ecuador qualifying, maybe even Chile/Colombia losing in intercontinental? Or some serious upsets in UEFA 2nd round?

Or are there points that come off teams - esp. with UEFA wrapping up - between now and April that might move us up? Or points don't "come off" until after April?

How far can the U.S. drop with a bevy of losses. Wouldn't it be ironic if hoping for Pot 3 meant cheering for...nope, don't think it, way too soon to be thinking about it.

Thanks in advance.

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31 minutes ago, CanadianTraveller said:

I know little about FIFA points, but your scenario suggests it'd take a miracle to get to Pot 3 - top 23. Ecuador qualifying, maybe even Chile/Colombia losing in intercontinental? Or some serious upsets in UEFA 2nd round?

Or are there points that come off teams - esp. with UEFA wrapping up - between now and April that might move us up? Or points don't "come off" until after April?

How far can the U.S. drop with a bevy of losses. Wouldn't it be ironic if hoping for Pot 3 meant cheering for...nope, don't think it, way too soon to be thinking about it.

Thanks in advance.

You win or lose points with each game (but FIFA only releases the updated rankings about once a month). Plus keep in mind, the teams that qualify for the World Cup won't be ranked from 1st to 32nd. There will be teams outside the top 32 rankings that make it to the World Cup. For example, right now Ecuador is ranked 48th and are in a qualifying position (they haven't qualified yet), and we are ranked 44th and in a qualifying position.

Teams ranked below us at the moment, and in a position to move on to the next round, to a playoff, or qualify.
Ecuador 48
Egypt 46
Ivory Coast 50
Mali 52
Ghana 51
DR Congo 63
Saudi Arabia 47
Lebanon 92
Finland 58
North Macedonia 66
Panama 67

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Does anyone know what pot the inter-confederation playoff winners go into? The main draw is taking place before the playoffs are completed, so FIFA will not know which teams have qualified. That being the case, the most logical explanation would be that those two would be in pot 4.

Currently that probably projects out to 2 of Japan, Colombia, New Zealand and Panama. If Japan and Colombia get relegated to pot 4, that would be huge in making pot 3 a realistic possibility.

Edited by footballfreak
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Big games in CAF coming up. Algeria (30), Tunisia (31), Nigeria (32) and Ivory Coast (50) could all crash out of qualifying today. 

Algeria (30) vs Burkina Faso (61)

A Burkina Faso win eliminates Algeria

Tunisia (31) vs Zambia (86)

Mauritania (103) vs Equatorial Guinea (115)

An Equatorial Guinea win and a Tunisia loss or draw will eliminate Tunisia and send Equatorial Guinea to the final phase of African qualifying. A 3 goal win by Zambia, coupled with an Equatorial Guinea loss would advance Zambia to the last round.

——

Nigeria (32) vs Cape Verde (75)

A Cape Verde win would eliminate Nigeria.

—-

Cameroon (55) vs Ivory Coast (50)

Cameroon needs a win at home to advance. Ivory Coast only needs a draw.

 

 

Edited by footballfreak
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Not only do FIFA rankings matter especially when it comes to finishing in tournaments like a Gold Cup but also the more friendly matches we play, that also helps too. But since we are in the middle of a qualifying campaign to get to Qatar, it is moot well right now anyway. But should we qualify for Qatar, then the CSA definitely should set up more friendly matches especially against countries who we could potentially face in Qatar should we get there.

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3 hours ago, footballfreak said:

Big games in CAF coming up. Algeria (30), Tunisia (31), Nigeria (32) and Ivory Coast (50) could all crash out of qualifying today. 

Algeria (30) vs Burkina Faso (61)

A Burkina Faso win eliminates Algeria

Tunisia (31) vs Zambia (86)

Mauritania (103) vs Equatorial Guinea (115)

An Equatorial Guinea win and a Tunisia loss or draw will eliminate Tunisia and send Equatorial Guinea to the final phase of African qualifying. A 3 goal win by Zambia, coupled with an Equatorial Guinea loss would advance Zambia to the last round.

——

Nigeria (32) vs Cape Verde (75)

A Cape Verde win would eliminate Nigeria.

—-

Cameroon (55) vs Ivory Coast (50)

Cameroon needs a win at home to advance. Ivory Coast only needs a draw.

 

 

Algeria and Nigeria survive and qualify for the final round of CAF qualifiers.

Other games coming up at 2pm est.

Current pots for the final playoffs

Pot 1: Senegal (20), Morocco (28), Algeria (30), Tunisia (31), Nigeria (36)

Pot 2: Egypt (47), Ivory Coast (50)/Cameroon(55), Ghana (51), Mali (52), DR Congo (63)

 

Edited by footballfreak
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2 hours ago, footballfreak said:

Algeria and Nigeria survive and qualify for the final round of CAF qualifiers.

Other games coming up at 2pm est.

Current pots for the final playoffs

 

Tunisia survives comfortably. Minor win for Canada as lower ranked Cameroon progress at the expense of Ivory Coast.

Tentative Pots are as follows:

Pot 1: Senegal (20), Morocco (28), Algeria (30), Tunisia (31), Nigeria (36)

Pot 2: Egypt (47), Ghana (51), Mali (52), Cameroon(55), DR Congo (63)

Despite the disappointing results today, there is still a lot of opportunity for Canada to finish ahead of some of the African qualifiers.

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6 hours ago, TGAA_Star said:

Not only do FIFA rankings matter especially when it comes to finishing in tournaments like a Gold Cup but also the more friendly matches we play, that also helps too. But since we are in the middle of a qualifying campaign to get to Qatar, it is moot well right now anyway. But should we qualify for Qatar, then the CSA definitely should set up more friendly matches especially against countries who we could potentially face in Qatar should we get there.

There is not much room in the International Calendar for us to play the friendlies due to Nations League starting up right after the WCQ.  The only window we have realistically is September for 2 games.

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On 11/4/2021 at 9:29 PM, Kent said:

I didn't try to contact CONCACAF about the rankings (I've already been given the cold shoulder once or twice asking about rankings for Champions League/CONCACAF League), and yeah, it's impossible to reverse engineer it seems. They give us most of the formula, but then have some mystery variable which itself might be calculated from several other variables. It's frustrating, and I gave up a long time ago.

 

A mistake plus keleven gets you home by seven. -Kevin Malone

 

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