what does fifa smoke?

[Mr Jack]

It makes perfect sense if people actually knew how the rankings were worked out. People forget that England win the vast majority of their games.

The rankings aren't supposed to be arbitrary, they're supposed the reality of how good teams are. No-one is going to suggest England are terrible; they're a decent side. We can beat most countries - not surprising since we're a decently sized, wealthy football-focused nation. Andorra, for example, don't stand much of a chance.

Fifa's rankings however suggest we're the third best side in the World, whereas that is patently absurd. We're not better than Brazil, Italy or Portugal, for example and when directly tested against teams like France and Sweden we scrapped by but didn't show ourselves to be substantially stronger sides as the ratings suggest.

Clearly, FIFA's methods of calculating the rankings aren't fit for purpose.

 

[mmj_uk]

The FIFA rankings are more about team form over a long period rather than a list of who will beat who, it's how the league structures work you can be the best team and still lose the league.

For example last seasons Premier League table shows that there was nothing between Man UTD and Man City, but in a survey of who was the superior team and would win in a head to head I think 90% of people would have said City.

Even though we got a bit battered in a couple of Euro 2012 matches we were still unbeaten in regulation time, even against a team that comfortably beat Germany and made the final.

 

[HangTime]

I'm quite staggered to be honest, not by the fact that England are ranked third but by the fact that people continue to be surprised by the rankings.

Euro 2008 which was appalling for England (they didn't qualify) has now dropped out, and if you look at our record in competitive matches it is pretty good, we dominated qualfication under Capello and when it came to the two big tournaments during the reporting period, the only team to beat us was Germany, who are above us in the rankings.

The key factor people overlook when it comes to these rankings is that you do not need to necessarily reach the latter stages of tournaments to do well, you just have to have good results against good teams.

In other words, world rankings are not a measure of quality or even success, they are a measure of performance. Many of the teams that are 'better' than England have not done that well in terms of actual matches, Holland lost every game at the Euros for example, Italy lost quite a few games in the build up etc. France have hardly dominated world football in the past 4 years either.

 

[psychodil]

No way we can be third with the tedious dross we play under hodgson. If there was a league of most negative football we may be near the top but that's it. We are worse IMO under hodgson than we were under capello.