Down to 5th from 3rd. Still completely wrong I think. But apparently Colombia have gone up 13 places and are now in the top 10!
an interesting question to ask might be, where do people honestly believe england should be placed in the rankings at this moment? i'd say about 16th would be fair - there must be at least 15 better nations today than us
What would other people rankings be, mine would be of the top of my head. 1.Spain 2.Brazil 3.Germany 4.Argentina 5.Italy 6.Holland 7.France 8.England 9.Senegal 10.Ghana
do you really think england are better than ghana guru? didn't they play us off the wembley pitch last year? very difficult to judge all the other nations as you hardly see any of them and those i do are usually only snippets but i really don't see how england would make top ten as it stands. off the top of my head i think russia, portugal, chile and uruguay are all better than us from what i've seen lately.
I'm not sure we can say the rankings are 'wrong' as such. The logic is that teams that have done well are awarded points, and these are weighted depending on the importance of the match. Care to admit it, or not, we have earned those points. We know in our hearts we are way off a top five spot, but then, we wouldn't have Brazil at 14th would we?
Sort of agree. A lot of the reason people think we are worse than perhaps we are is we play quite boring football while say some of the south American teams are perceived to play more attractive football. This of course does not make them better and we do quite well against the more average sides. Saying that England are no where near the top sides. Maybe about 12th-16th is more realistic. Depends if you believe the big tournaments are the be all and end all or if people regard qualifiers as very important.
Presumably the same sort of points system that took the rail bid away from Virgin trains and worked out the seedings for this years Champions League - under the old system Man City would be the only English team in the competition but under the new points system they were not even a top seed. How about reverting to expert knowledge and common sense? If we can't get into the top 3 in the Euros how could we have been ranked 3 in the World?
Definately wouldn't say Chile are better than us, also i would say that we are capable of beating Ghana just as much as them beating us. I obviously put the top 6 above us because i believe we would do well to get a draw, us and france are about the same, and i would expect us to beat Ghana more time than we beat them in say a 10 game series. thats why i put us above them. And as Gandy says, we earned those points to be third so we are obviously doing something right!
you seen chile recently mate? they are excellent. alexis sanchez and arturo vidal are much better than any english players and that's just two of their stand out players. colombia too are ever improving and would probably beat us. we haven't made a quarter final of a major tournament since 1996, so how we can be ranked in the top four at any point is beyond me. we didn't even qualify for the previous euro's!! we haven't beaten a top ten ranked team in a major tournament since 96 either.
Not sure about the rail thing, I'm still smarting over the Beeching report! It's a system like any other - I doubt I could conceive a better one, and it does seem to have the teams perveived as being the best at the top more often than not. It's only wrong when England appear high on it, or so it seems.
i think it was when england, off the back of a distinctly average showing at the euros, were propelled up to third position in the world that people started to think "what the...?"
For some reason, us brits always seem to have a downer on ourselves and think that everything else is done better abroad! Thats why i hate all this 'we must copy the spanish football' they are the best side because they are good at what THEY do, foreign teams used to hate the british teams because it was an 'in your face' style of football putting dodgy foreign keepers under pressure with crosses and they couldn't cope with it, now i believe we are weaker because we haven't got our own style.
Got to say I agree with this We shouldn't copy other styles. We need to play to our strengths as the Spanish do.
Mind you they are only ranking and not like a Grand Prix system. It gives us an advantage I suppose but we normally get seeded for the WC because we won it nearly 50 years ago. It could be based on the Duckworth Lewis method of course.
I agree with you - England should be ranked much lower than they are - probably around 11th or 12th in my opinion - but come on! I've seen Alexis Sanchez and Arturo Vidal play plenty of times, and yes they are good. But, in my opinion, Rooney (although obviously a slightly different player to Sanchez) is better than Sanchez, and Wilshere, before his hideous injury was just as good as Vidal. Yes, Chile are good, of course they are - but no better than England, who I believe would beat them more than they would beat us.
really? you think rooney is better than sanchez???? all that flair, pace and skill. goals galore too. do you think rooney would get anywhere near the barca team? blimey! i know which one i'd rather have in an england shirt and he doesn't look like shrek thing is, rooney is massively over rated. he is NOT world class. he briefly looked as though he would be world class at euro 04 when i think even i felt we had a megastar on our hands but he has never been the same since. he's a very good player but nothing more sadly. sanchez is world class. wilshere has played about 30 games - not sure anyone can tell how good he could be yet.
I'm afraid my friend that you are trying to defend the indefensible. Look at the facts quoted by Supers in the post above yours and explain to me how, on any basis of common sense, can England be either 3rd or 5th in the World. Widening the debate further who needs these rankings? What purpose do they serve apart from keeping a small army of pen pushers in a job? Take the Champions league. How can a team that has not won a trophy in 5 years be a top seed but the team that are the Champions of the best league in Europe aren't. That is what happens with a points system but it is called the CHAMPIONS league for heavens sake!!! Sack all the pen pushers, tell them to stick their points systems and spread sheets where the sun don't shine and bring back common sense.
no issue having rankings as they are useful for seeding teams, but i don't know how they come to their conclusions. i recall a few years back we played the dutch in a friendly at white hart lane, lost 2-0, and a week later went above the dutch in the rankings! no logic at all. we only ever get so high because we beat all the dross in our group each year.
