England have risen two places to fourth in the Fifa world rankings despite their Euro 2012 quarter-final exit! European champions Spain remain number one, while beaten finalists Italy - who knocked England out on penalties - go up six places but only to sixth! The 2014 World Cup hosts Brazil drop out of the top 10 for the first time, falling five spots to 11th. Makes no sense to me! Views?
It's because the teams who did better than us were either already ahead of us or behind us far enough that they weren't able to overtake us despite a substantial increase in ranking (e.g. Italy).
It's based on results, the only real objective measure around. Trying to base rankings on something nebulous and subjective like "how well did they play" would be ridiculous.
Well we've gone above Netherlands who lost all three group games, and Brazil who lost friendlies to Mexico and Argentina. Italy only won two games in the tournament, and I don't think they were the second best team there. Best to think of the rankings as who has had the best results, and England have had 4 wins out of 6.
They are obviously distorted by the fact Brazil aren't playing competitive football with their bye into the world cup for hosting it, and our decent results in the Euros. 4th is obviously absurd, but based on recent form (with all the caveats that entails), that's the way it is.
Cant really agree with that ...it is true over a season in a league situation but in international footie it's possible that a particular team has relatively easier fixtures than others and therefore acheive higher rankings...as Dan says it's absurd and meaningless anyway
Not so, they weight the points so that you get more for beating a higher ranked team and less for a lower ranked one (and the converse for losing). Our draws against France and Italy would count as good results, for example. If you look at our form over the last year or so it's actually very good. We've won loads of friendlies including against Spain and only lost one game in qualifying for the Euros - the last one after we'd already qualified. I agree it's a distorted picture but that's all they can really go on.
It may be absurd, but its not meaningless. Those ranking go a long way to determining seedings for World Cups.
