FIFA has published the newest ranking among the national teams. It is safe for work...[NSFW]1 Spain 2 Netherlands 3 Germany 4 England 5 Brazil 6 Italy 7 Portugal 8 Croatia 9 Mexico 10 Argentina 11 Norway 12 Greece 13 Japan 14 Côte d'Ivoire 15 France 16 Montenegro 17 Russia 18 Uruguay 19 Sweden 20 Denmark 21 Slovenia 22 Australia 23 Turkey 24 USA 25 Serbia 26 Korea Republic 27 Chile 28 Slovakia 29 Switzerland 30 Israel 31 Republic of Ireland 32 Paraguay 33 Ghana 34 Egypt 35 Belgium 36 Czech Republic 37 Burkina Faso 38 Jamaica 39 Bosnia-Herzegovina 40 Belarus 41 Nigeria 42 Ukraine 43 Senegal 44 Honduras 45 Hungary 46 Bulgaria 47 South Africa 48 Cameroon 49 Peru 50 Iran[/NSFW] 1: England-4th? Absolute joke (I'm sorry, but it is!) 2: Norway 11th?!?!! They are horrible, no way near 11th in the world. 3: Sweden-19th, feels reasonable. Even though I reckon we are better than Norway, Greece and Montenegro. Your thoughts? Any surprises?
We were 6th on the last list. The rankings are based on results over the past four years and as we usually win our qualifying games, we bounce up the list.
My ****ing arse are we the 4th best team in the world. We're not the 4th best team in Europe. In fact at the moment I'm not even sure we're the 4th best team in the UK...
We've won a higher percentage of games under Capello than any other manager so it make sense we would move up the rankings.
There's a good explanation on the Sky website. Games in the World Cup are now only worth 50% of the points they were before. So someone who had a great World Cup, like Uruguay, will move down the rankings now. While teams who had a crap World Cup but have performed well since, like France, Italy and England, have moved up.
Montenegro (16th!?), Norway, Burkina Faso, Jamaica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belarus, Senegal, Honduras, Hungary, South Africa, Peru and Iran are all above Scotland!?
Well I reckon that Montenegro, Bosnia and Senegal are better than Scotland. Norway, Belarus, Honduras, Hungary and South Africa are on the same level, whiles Burkina Faso, Jamaica, Peru and Iran probably are worse
It is frankly a ridiculous system. Surely the best way to gauge how good a team is is by having them compete against the rest of the world's elite and then rank them accordingly. I dont know, why dont they, say, hold a tournament every 4 years or so and use that to determine which teams do well when competing against other good teams? This could then be incorporated into a ranking system, whereby teams that do reasonably well and make the semi finals be ranked in the top 4 in the world. Similarly, those that waddle around in a stench of inpetitude and demonstrate beyond doubt that the home based media are the most short-sighted and biased purveyors of over-inflated praise only dwarfed by the players salaries themselves be ranked somewhere on a par with Papua New Guinea. Only an idea, like.
The way they work it out is stupid. The only reason teams like Iran are high up is because they're playing the likes of Nepal, Hong Kong, *****lia, Yemen, Oman and Timor-Leste.
To be fair, Scotland is probably closer to their true position ( but still a bit high), than England are after the **** that Rooney et al produce on-field for England.
10 of the top 32 did not qualify for the World Cup in 2010 - that tells you everything you need to know. Adrian Durham on TalkSport made a point earlier that just because we don't perform well at the major tournaments, it doesn't mean to say we don't produce our most consistent form in qualifying, projecting us as the 4th best team in the world. He compared it to golf, where Luke Donald and Lee Westwood have recently been the world's number 1, but they have both failed to win a major championship as yet. He's talking ****e if you ask me, but I'm just putting it out there.
