http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24069574 No real surprise about England but Columbia 5th ahead of Brazil and Uruguay!? [h=2]Fifa world rankings[/h]1 Spain 1514 (1) 2 Argentina 1263 (4) 3 Germany 1261 (2) 4 Italy 1199 (6) 5 Colombia 1180 (3) 6 Belgium 1159 (10) 7 Uruguay 1126 (12) 8 Brazil 1067 (9) 9 Netherlands 1058 (5) 10 Croatia 1051 (8)
When you consider that Colombia are 2nd in the South American World Cup qualifying group, only behind Argentina, it's not overwhelmingly surprising that they're 5th. They're very strong these days - Falcao's one of the world's best players!
Brazil have not been playing competative matches. Uruguay have won thier last 3, but were in serious risk of not going to the World Cup
It is an impossible task because comparing different continental strengths is a challenge. You could ask how are Croatia tenth whereas Chile are 16th just above us. However, I think you can roughly bunch them. I would put us in a bracket with USA, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland and France all of which we could beat.
Ukraine turn out to be number 26, Montenegro 27, Poland 65, Moldova 129. By the way, Sweden are 22nd, Denmark 23rd and little ol' France 25th..! http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/rankingtable/index.html
There are the alternative ELo rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Football_Elo_Ratings), which seem a bit more sensible until you see England's positioning. The truth is none of the systems are perfect but better than when USA and Mexico used to always be in the top 10!
I've made this point on here before, but I think it makes perfect sense. Each win will gain you points, while losses obviously lose you points. If you're playing a team better than you, this is factored in, and you'll get more points/lose less points. I think the margin of victory is also taken into account. If the match is competitive, you'll get/lose more points, as these matches are better indicators of a team's strength than a friendly. Points scored only in the last 5 years are counted, and if I remember correctly, there is more weighting on recent results than on 4-year old results. For me, FIFA have devised the perfect indicator of a team's strength, and I for one would certainly be hard-pushed to create a fairer ranking system.
The main problems with the accuracy is because international teams only play 8-10 games a year, so there's not much to go on. Then they have to go back in time a few years, but you wouldn't judge Saints now on how good they were 3 years ago... sometimes I think they should take into account margins of victory, but apart from that, it's ok.
England have dropped from 3rd a year ago, without loosing a competitive fixture. Strange that...how were they third?
We haven't been good enough to be third in recent memory, but, by studying sheep entrails, I think we are really more like 10-12th now (if all the teams in the world played each other). Doesn't mean that I think we are a good team to watch or anything like that, but we can get results against most teams even if we have to grind them into submission.
Long story short: good performance (results wise) in the Euros and Euro qualifiers, other teams around us doing relatively worse. Since then we've drawn a few games against weaker teams, been beaten by in a friendly by Sweden, etc. We weren't third for long, so that could be fairly described as an anomaly I think!
England are no worse than Croatia or Uruguay, and we're probably better than Colombia everywhere but up front.
We may have better players than Colombia but that doesn't make us a better team. You could probably say England are the QPR of international football
The reason England are falling down the list is nothing to do with how bad our team is. It is actually because of how bad the quality of opposition in our qualifying group is. You can't gain many points on a 'handicapped' award system. All our opponents are gaining because of their handicaps where if we win or draw we get next to nothing. A team that plays in a 'group of death' and does well will always shoot up the rankings.
To a point, but also the fact we aren't beating them! So far we've only won games against San Marino and Moldova after all.
