Saturday, 20 August 2011

Does the world need another football world ranking system?

Well, no, not really, I suppose.

So why bother?  Curiosity mainly.  It all started when FIFA released their June 2011 World Rankings and England, despite not having actually won a game for three months, had risen from 6th to 4th.  Like pretty much everyone else, I thought there was no way that England could possibly be the 4th best team in the world, but I asked myself - where should they be then, if not 4th?


The method I've used to find out is something I'd talked about with a friend some years before.  I'll write much more about it in future posts, but basically each team has their ranking points and a percentage of these points are played for in each match with the winner taking all the points.  If the match is drawn, each team gets half of the points (so a lower ranked team would get a points increase overall).  Exactly what percentage of each team's points is played for is dependent on the match venue and whether the game is competitive or a friendly.

England, incidentally, are 6th in my June 2011 rankings, which seems about right.

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