FIFA Rank Ireland 43rd

[smellyfeet]

Ireland have dropped in ranking again.
If i'm correct at one stage we were ranked 7th.
What has gone so wrong.

[NeilMcD]

Did not win enough matches

[Stuttgart88]

Not enough games against Andorra unfortunately. England up to 4th but Italy, who I seem to recall actually winning the World Cup quite recently and going something like 30 unbeaten until last week, are now 5th.

Our own ranking reflects the reality that we're actually winless against a decent country in a competitive match since 2001, and as pointed out earlier this week, that was a fluke. Prior to that it was Yugoslavia in 1999.

[smellyfeet]

Where do we place the blame tough,is it that we have had the wrong manager for last few years or is it down to the players. Or is it that the younger generation don't play as much instead they play PLAYSTATIONS resulting in no good youth coming tru?

[Billsthoughts]

anybody else seriously worried by some of the quotes coming from Ashley Coles book. If his attitude is the norm with these players then **** them.

[OwlsFan]

anybody else seriously worried by some of the quotes coming from Ashley Coles book. If his attitude is the norm with these players then **** them.

Cashley Cole ? Better things to be doing that reading his book.

[Billsthoughts]

you should read it...he is highly critical of the FAI....

[Schumi]

What dealings has Ashley Cole had with the FAI? :confused:

[Stuttgart88]

The workings behind the rankings

England have climbed to fourth in Fifa's latest world stats, but are they relevant?

Ian Bass
Wednesday September 13, 2006
Guardian Unlimited


England's ascent to fourth in the Fifa world rankings, leapfrogging world champions Italy, has raised a few eyebrows.
How can victories against minnows Andorra, and the far-from-earth-shattering Macedonia, suddenly propel England into what is ostensibly a World Cup semi-finalist ranking or a European Championship final seeding? The answer cannot come from a drubbing of Greece, surely, as they failed to qualify for the World Cup, and it was only a friendly, after all. And how can Italy's poor form since winning the World Cup mean that they are now rated as being worse than Steve McClaren's men?


Time, then, for a look at how the Fifa rankings actually work. A straw poll of people who live and breathe sport in general, and football in particular, revealed that no one actually had the slightest idea. So is the usual clamour to criticise them on the basis that they are fundamentally rubbish unfair and simply the result of poor education?
The rankings released after the World Cup were based for the first time on results from the previous four years - a change from eight years - as a response to criticism that ancient history had too much bearing on a team's ranking.

There are four basic criteria that affect a team's ranking - match result, match status, opposition strength and regional strength - with a weighting system that favours more recent results.

Match result

The first criterion is, rather sensibly, the result of the games. This is applied on the basis of a slightly modified league system, not unlike most leagues in the world.

Win without a penalty shoot-out: 3 points.
Win on penalties: 2 points.
Lose on penalties: 1 point.
Draw: 1 point.
Lose: 0 points.

So the basic measure has the appearance of common sense and allows for the difference between losing in the lottery of the penalty shoot-out. So far, so good.

Match status

A multiplier is then applied to the result according to the importance of the fixture, thus ensuring that competitive matches have more relevance to a team's ranking than friendlies.

World Cup finals match: 4.0x
Continental Cup (e.g. European Championship, African Cup of Nations): 3.0x
Confederation Cup: 3.0x
World Cup and continental cup qualifiers: 2.5x
Friendly matches: 1.0x

While it undoubtedly makes sense to weight in favour of competitive matches the values selected seem somewhat arbitrary. Can the Confederation Cup really be worth as much as the European Championships? Or is this Fifa attempting to boost the profile of its own rather unexciting tournament?

It also seems rather puzzling that a World Cup match should be worth more than a European Championship match when the opposition could be identical. Was it harder to beat France in the 1998 World Cup finals than it was to beat them in Euro 2000, simply because it was the World Cup? A possible answer could be that the World Cup, as the premier national team competition is likely to feature all the best teams. One of the other criteria introduces a bias based on opposition strength, so the answer cannot lie here. And that is without mentioning some of the lower-ranked teams from Asia, North and Central America or Africa that make up the World Cup line-up.

It does go some way to explaining the inflated rankings for the US and Mexico prior to the World Cup, though a regional measure attempts to address this.

Opposition strength

Winning matches against teams with a higher ranking is more significant than against minnows.

The somewhat confusing calculation for this is: Opposition strength multiplier = [200 - ranking position]/100.

This means that a team ranked fourth (England) have an opposition strength multiplier of [200-4]/100 = 1.96.

Scotland have a multiplier of [200-34]/100 = 1.66, while a team ranked 149th have a multiplier of 0.51. Any team below 150 automatically has a multiplier of 0.5.

This seems fair, in principle, but shares an inherent weakness with other rankings systems that take opposition strength into account.

Basing a measure on another one already in the system can lead to an exacerbation of any errors and damages the integrity of the rankings.

Regional strength

Fifa acknowledge that European and South American competition is stronger than elsewhere by applying multipliers to matches against teams from different regions.

Uefa (Europe): 1.0x
Conmebol (S America): 0.98x
Caf (Africa): 0.85x
Concacaf (N&C America): 0.85x
OFC (Oceania): 0.85x
AFC (Asia): 0.85x

This means that continental cup matches are weighted down in weaker regions, which seems appropriate, but also works against strong teams in weak regions, such as Australia. It also has the appearance of sharing an arbitrary and unshifting quality with the match status, placing Asia at the same level as Oceania, for example.

Ratings period

Fifa sensibly weight results in favour of the more recent.

Within the last 12 months: 1.0x
12-24 months: 0.5x
24-36 months: 0.3x
36-48 months: 0.2x

This means that matches in the past year are five times more relevant to matches three to four years ago, giving a reasonably, if again arbitrary, up-to-date nature to the rankings.

When all these are applied the figure is multiplied by 100 and rounded off to give the points total.

All very scientific, all very complicated, but is it reflective of team strength? Are England better than Italy? Or Germany? Or Portugal?

The only way to tell is to pit teams against each other as a way of determining who is best, perhaps in some kind of tournament. If there are too many teams to make that feasible, a qualifying stage could be introduced to eliminate the weaker sides, perhaps based regionally for logistical reasons, with a finals tournament once every so often, perhaps every four years.

And if all of the national teams in the world can enter, why don't we call it the World Cup?

[The Legend]

Looks like Northern Ireland are now catching up with us in the rankings.... very very sad for the Republic.

[EalingGreen]

Looks like Northern Ireland are now catching up with us in the rankings.... very very sad for the Republic.

http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/rank/compare.html?static=5

Enter Team 1: NI - versus - Team 2: ROI, and the years 2004 - 2006.

Happy New Year 2007? :cool:

[Stuttgart88]

Just on the subject of Ashley Cole's book, which I haven't even bothered reading the extracts of, here's a piece from the excellent Martin Samuel. Worth a read:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8305-2355262_1,00.html

[dr_peepee]

Quality read!!

[Qwerty]

Looks like Northern Ireland are now catching up with us in the rankings.... very very sad for the Republic.

NI have beaten England and Spain in the past 12 months. I saw the Spain game and NI looked comfortable on the ball and well organized. Healy is a phenom for them. I think they had 3 Premiership players playing.

Holland in 2001 at home and a pretty fluke result it was as well is our last win again good oppostion, I think we have an inflated opinion of what we are. We are mediocre.

[mjpcc]

Looks like Northern Ireland are now catching up with us in the rankings.... very very sad for the Republic.

Not catching up - we are going in opposite directions :(

[Stuttgart88]

NI have beaten England and Spain in the past 12 months. I saw the Spain game and NI looked comfortable on the ball and well organized. Healy is a phenom for them. I think they had 3 Premiership players playing.
They looked like a proper balanced team. I'd prefer to have a decent player playing in his correct position than having a better player playing out of position. Mick's good campaign for WC02 owed a lot to the balance of the side in my opinion. In Stuttgart, for example, we had 4 players playing in positions they don't play for their clubs. OK, 3 if you say that O'Shea is a midfielder now at United, but that's not really the case.

There are other lessons we can learn from Norn Iron too, but let's not escape the fact that Raul missed a sitter at 2-2 and then Spain made a hash of a simple long ball from Taylor. We didn't get anything like that kind of break against France at home, for example, when we actually played well enough.

I also think there's a part of our gameplan retained from the Charlton era that we need to drop: that international games are about squeezing out a narrow result in a tight game. Every week of international fixtures throws up games that ebb & flow and the lead changes hands, like NI vs Spain. We never have games like that anymore. I think we should be more open and actually engage teams with less fear & caution than we do, and have done for nigh on 20 years.

[shakermaker1982]

Scotland are now ahead of us....

Good luck to N Ireland - they have beaten two of the bigger nations and should go up the rankings. How England are above the world champions perplexes me no end. Andorra and Macedonia? How I wish we had the luck they possess when it comes to being plucked out of a pot.

[erinfootball]

Where do we place the blame tough,is it that we have had the wrong manager for last few years or is it down to the players. Or is it that the younger generation don't play as much instead they play PLAYSTATIONS resulting in no good youth coming tru?

Good point. Kids who have a lot of talent sit at the computer instead of playing football, basketball, or anything.

[as_i_say]

T

I also think there's a part of our gameplan retained from the Charlton era that we need to drop: that international games are about squeezing out a narrow result in a tight game. Every week of international fixtures throws up games that ebb & flow and the lead changes hands, like NI vs Spain. We never have games like that anymore. I think we should be more open and actually engage teams with less fear & caution than we do, and have done for nigh on 20 years.

Translation: too much fear. agree -Staunton should realise that as a 4th seed we are simply not going to get anywhere unless we go for it away from home. Mccarthy made similar mistakes against the likes of croatia and yugoslavia a few years ago but this time its different. we need to go for wins away from home as there is just as much chance of us getting beaten at home with this team.

argh

[EalingGreen]

Where do we place the blame tough,is it that we have had the wrong manager for last few years or is it down to the players. Or is it that the younger generation don't play as much instead they play PLAYSTATIONS resulting in no good youth coming tru?

Don't kids play with Playstations in e.g. Holland or Germany? Why should that be something which particularly affects the ROI?
In any case, even if it is something peculiarly Irish, it might be a factor in future years, but could hardly be used to explain past disappointments under Kerr or McCarthy.