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

[Guest Tg11]

Either way by fixing the rankings does it really help Canada in the long run though? I mean even after all is said and done what matters more is results and as long as you can do that your ranking rises.

[nfitz]

21 hours ago, Tg11 said:

Either way by fixing the rankings does it really help Canada in the long run though? I mean even after all is said and done what matters more is results and as long as you can do that your ranking rises.

Indeed!

Fixing the ranking, sorts out some minor issues - but really, it's about playing and winning games. Though with the new system, removing some disincentives for some teams to play games - it doesn't hurt!

More significant are the new Nations Leagues, which will get everyone more competitive games. And allow many countries to improve. Though we have to improve too (heck, perhaps other nations improving, will hurt Canada - but it's probably for the best).

[Guest Tg11]

8 hours ago, nfitz said:

Indeed!

Fixing the ranking, sorts out some minor issues - but really, it's about playing and winning games. Though with the new system, removing some disincentives for some teams to play games - it doesn't hurt!

More significant are the new Nations Leagues, which will get everyone more competitive games. And allow many countries to improve. Though we have to improve too (heck, perhaps other nations improving, will hurt Canada - but it's probably for the best).

Plus by competing in this League it helps us with Gold Cup seeding as well as Qatar 2022 qualifying

[Soro17]

10 hours ago, nfitz said:

Indeed!

Fixing the ranking, sorts out some minor issues - but really, it's about playing and winning games. Though with the new system, removing some disincentives for some teams to play games - it doesn't hurt!

More significant are the new Nations Leagues, which will get everyone more competitive games. And allow many countries to improve. Though we have to improve too (heck, perhaps other nations improving, will hurt Canada - but it's probably for the best).

The League of Nations will help us because it will get us playing games. Pretty much all of the other Concacaf countries were able to rack up points by playing in Copa Centramerico, Caribbean Cup, Gold Cup qualifying, etc. while we were left with the odd friendly against some middling team or another. 

[SkuseisLoose]

I don’t know if rankings still matter because of the new concacaf rankings but we moved up one spot to 79 while curaçao moved down to 80 but El Salvador jumped both teams by going up 13 spots to 72.

[Toronto Ruffrider]

For World Cup qualifying purposes, the rankings still matter I'm sure. And with these CONCACAF Nations League qualifying matches counting as Gold Cup qualifiers, we'll actually earn some serious points heading into the draw for the 2022 qualifiers. I've basically been advocating for this for years - no more automatic entry into the Gold Cup, and qualifying matches that could beef up our ranking points in time to earn us a decent draw for the big qualifiers.

[Kent]

4 minutes ago, Toronto Ruffrider said:

For World Cup qualifying purposes, the rankings still matter I'm sure. And with these CONCACAF Nations League qualifying matches counting as Gold Cup qualifiers, we'll actually earn some serious points heading into the draw for the 2022 qualifiers. I've basically been advocating for this for years - no more automatic entry into the Gold Cup, and qualifying matches that could beef up our ranking points in time to earn us a decent draw for the big qualifiers.

They will probably use rankings from before the Nations League qualifiers. So it’s a good thing long term for the reason you mention, but not for a long time (potentially 8 years from now).

[Boominbooty]

1 hour ago, SkuseisLoose said:

I don’t know if rankings still matter because of the new concacaf rankings but we moved up one spot to 79 while curaçao moved down to 80 but El Salvador jumped both teams by going up 13 spots to 72.

Those are the rankings from June. The post World Cup rankings come out on the 19th. Expect us to tumble . . .

[SkuseisLoose]

5 minutes ago, Boominbooty said:

Those are the rankings from June. The post World Cup rankings come out on the 19th. Expect us to tumble . . .

Oh sorry thought it came out on the 14th didn’t even check the date 

[Kent]

So the new rankings are supposed to come out today, but nothing yet. It's also supposed to be a new system (no longer released monthly, will be calculated after each game I believe). Has anyone heard of a delay?

[nfitz]

Yes - delayed until August apparently.

[jtpc]

New rankings are out. We have 1304 points, good for 8th in CONCACAF.

It looks like they converted everyone over using the June point totals. That works out much better for us, considering we were going to drop from 411 to 315 between the June and July updates of the old system. Nice!

In the example that FIFA provides below of calculating how many points a country could receive for winning a match, if anyone knows what order you do the calculations in that formula, I'd like to know. I have no clue how team A gets 17 points in that mess of brackets and operations. lol

https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/revision-of-the-fifa-coca-cola-world-ranking.pdf?cloudid=iklxmt2jejtjwf8qecba

This is going to be a slow climb then, as with their example, if a team with 1300 points (like us) defeats a team with 1500 points (like Mexico or the US) in a Nations League Final (weighted at a factor of 25), and it only gets you 17 points, anything less than a Nations League Final against weaker opposition, will be peanuts for points.

I'd be interested to know how many points a win vs. USVI could get us. 1 point perhaps? lol The easy variables to plug in are our points (1304), the factor of a group phase Nations League match (15), and the difference between our ranking (1304) and USVI (892) being 412, but beyond that, I'm not sure how to calculate the entire formula. 

Edited August 16, 2018 by jtpc

[Shway]

Win games, we'll be alright. 

[jpg75]

Order of operations. Brackets first.

[shorty]

Never invite a math teacher to explain math...  ?

Exponents first, so for team A you compute -(1300-1500)/600 first to get the exponent on 10. Then you add 1 to get the denominator. Divide 1 by this result to get "WE". Notice that if you play a higher ranked team the 10 is raised to a positive power, whereas a positive dr raises 10 to a negative power. This means (using limits, ie extreme values at either end) that WE ranges from 0 to 1. So if you win, you get between 0 and 1 times the importance factor. Tie and you get between 0.5 and -0.5 times i ; lose and you get between -1 and 0 times i .

[grande]

So, if my math is correct, a win vs USVI will give us 2.55 points (rounded up to 3, I assume).

And this is only if the Importance value for a LoN qualifying match is the same as a LoN group stage match.

[shorty]

I used i=15 and got the same as you.

I also used the real extreme values from the ranking table as opposed to the theoretical limits, and you can currently only gain (or lose) between 3.5 - 96.5% of the importance value in any given match.  Two teams with equal rankings (ie a dr of 0) results in a WE of 0.5, as it should -- meaning that a draw results in no change for either team.  A win by either of these teams nets 0.5 times the importance factor.

 

[shorty]

But to your main point (I think), yeah, the changes are going to be incremental under this system, and even though we will have more meaningful games with the LoN, we shouldn't expect the huge boosts you would see Caribbean nations get under the old system (but nor will anyone else).  Like Janinho Guerro says, just win. This system flattens out the changes, and rewards consistent good form more than peaking at the right time.

[Kent]

Couldn’t you make an argument that i=25 for these nations league qualifiers, because they are also qualifiers for the confederation final competition (ie Gold Cup qualifiers). Or are we to assume those won’t apply since the top teams aren’t getting qualifiers?

[shorty]

I think you could make that argument, at least this time around (not sure/don't remember how qualification for the Gold Cup will work in subsequent years after the LoN groups are established).  I wasn't arguing for i=15 necessarily, just agreeing that i=15 results in 2.6 points if we beat USVI.  i=25 results in 4 and change.  Either way it's not a lot, which I think was grande's point.

[Kent]

On 6/18/2018 at 4:14 PM, Kent said:

I just looked into this a bit more. I used the tool to calculate next months scores for the other CONCACAF teams. Currently we are ranked 8th in CONCACAF. Next month El Salvador will actually take an even bigger drop and fall below us, but Trinidad & Tobago, Curacao, and Haiti will all leap frog us. So we will move from 8th in CONCACAF to 10th in CONCACAF. We don't know what the qualifying format will be like for 2022 but if it happened to be the same as 2018 we would be in the same pot (9th through 21st) as 2018 qualifying. The pots then were 1st-6th, 7th-8th, 9th-21st, and 22nd-35th.

So the new system prevented any of the projected movement I mentioned from happening, so we definitely benefited at least in the short term. El Salvador is still in front of us, T&T, Curacao, and Haiti are all still behind us. Still 8th in CONCACAF. Now we wait to see what the qualifying format for 2022 will be.

[Blackdude]

With Nations' League being the primary Gold Cup qualifier, it is pretty good for us because other federations that got points from a turkey shoot would be in the same boat as us. No more CFU qualifiers is really good for us, so I think our rankings compared to other CONCACAF countries will look more close to reality than before.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Blackdude

[xabuep2]

With these pre-qualifiers to the Concacaf Nation´s  League, and with the league itself Concacaf was looking to create his own ranking (at least, that's how I understood when this league was created.)

It was even said that it would determine the order of the pots for the World 2022 qualifiers.

Concacaf already said that they will show in a couple of days a U-20 ranking. 

I wonder which ranking will be used for the Qatar´s qualifiers, the one of the FIFA or the one of the Concacaf.

 

Edited August 17, 2018 by xabuep2

[Kent]

14 hours ago, xabuep2 said:

With these pre-qualifiers to the Concacaf Nation´s  League, and with the league itself Concacaf was looking to create his own ranking (at least, that's how I understood when this league was created.)

It was even said that it would determine the order of the pots for the World 2022 qualifiers.

Concacaf already said that they will show in a couple of days a U-20 ranking. 

I wonder which ranking will be used for the Qatar´s qualifiers, the one of the FIFA or the one of the Concacaf.

 

UEFA has their own ranking as well but I believe they still use FIFA rankings for World Cup Qualifying (I think confederations are forced to).

[jtpc]

It's great to see how quickly the gap is closing in the CONCACAF rankings between us and the countries ranked 4-6. Honduras and Panama have faced tough opponents in friendlies during the CNLQ matches, but still, we'll take it. ?

From the first CONCACAF ranking in March until today:

We are +44
Jamaica is -3
Honduras is -32
Panama is -150 

The current 4-7 rankings are:

Honduras 1,637
Panama 1,550
Jamaica 1,513
Canada 1,492

We just gained 21 points for our win over Saint Kitts and Nevis. Even though we won't get FIFA points for our March CNLQ match vs. French Guiana, we will get CONCACAF points. With FG ranked a little higher than SKN, a win in March would probably result in a similar gain of at least 20 points, which may even put us into 6th (depending on what Jamaica do in El Salvador).

Edited December 1, 2018 by jtpc