World Cup Seeding

Does anyone have any opinions on this?

http://fog2014.blogspot.ie/2014/07/w...g-blunder.html

Dont you think its strange/wrong how FIFA calculate the points? The strength of the opponent factor in some cases is determined on the opponent's rank 3 months after the match was played and not on the actual date the match was played.

Another example is France when they played Iceland in a Friendly in May 2012. FIFA are awarding france 309 pts for this game but it would be 207 going by Iceland's rank in May 2012. Instead FIFA use the rank in Nov 2012 to calculate the points. Can this not lead to corruption, say you want to give France a boost in the rankings, just wait till their opponent moves up the rankings before "inserting" the match into the rankings?

ME:
Iceland were ranked in 131 when France beat them so the points that I calculated for that match were M*I*T*C = 3*1*69*1 =207. Why should this be 309?

FIFA reply
Just checked it.

The games against Serbia and Iceland were only inserted in the world ranking on November 2012. That is the reason.

Why can it take 6 or 7 months to classify a match as an A-international or not?

Interesting post.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davidatrb

Does anyone have any opinions on this?

http://fog2014.blogspot.ie/2014/07/w...g-blunder.html

Dont you think its strange/wrong how FIFA calculate the points? The strength of the opponent factor in some cases is determined on the opponent's rank 3 months after the match was played and not on the actual date the match was played.

Another example is France when they played Iceland in a Friendly in May 2012. FIFA are awarding france 309 pts for this game but it would be 207 going by Iceland's rank in May 2012. Instead FIFA use the rank in Nov 2012 to calculate the points. Can this not lead to corruption, say you want to give France a boost in the rankings, just wait till their opponent moves up the rankings before "inserting" the match into the rankings?

ME:
Iceland were ranked in 131 when France beat them so the points that I calculated for that match were M*I*T*C = 3*1*69*1 =207. Why should this be 309?

FIFA reply
Just checked it.

The games against Serbia and Iceland were only inserted in the world ranking on November 2012. That is the reason.

Why can it take 6 or 7 months to classify a match as an A-international or not?

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Probably you'd be better off firing your q to Edgar on http://www.football-rankings.info
as almost all anyone here knows about rankings is due to Edgar.

According to him when asked about that same question "It has already been established that the FIFA ranking tool is not up-to-date with regard to the latest removals and inclusions of matches in the FIFA fixture list."

As an irrelevant but noteworthy aside, it is noteworthy that Iceland played France offa the park at that game and went 2 goals ahead before the lucky french scraped 3 latish goals.
It could also be noted that in these days Iceland are at 47 and Ireland touching 70 in the FIFA rankings.

I snipped this image from FIFA's official site. http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/index.html. If you click on Italy to see a breakdown of their recent points.

Attachment 2127

See the points for the match against Luxembourg? 1 * 1 * 88 * 1 = 81? How can FIFA be allowed to use the rankings for something as important as seeding teams for WC or WCQ when the maths that they apply is atrocious?

They have just done Italy out of 7 points right there in one match, so averaged over 13 matches that they played, is only half a point, but these margins make a difference. They were only 2 points short of being seeded before their miserable World Cup in a draw that placed them in a group of death.

I know what they have done, the match was played on the 4th of June, but they used the rankings from the 5th of June. LUX dropped from 112nd to 119th which would change the strength calculation. There must have been a delay in registering the match. But still, it looks terrible to publish 1*1*88*1=81 on their official page. And still again the strength factor should be calculated on the strenght on the date of the match and not the date inserted into their database.

Agreed, it seems absolutely insane to use the opponent's 'strength' on the day the database was updated rather than the day of the match!

There has to be a hidden decimal point in that Italy example. So 1*0.92*88*1 or something.

I hope!!

Sorry pineapple stu, no hidden decimal point or round off error. I think that Sepp's grandkids just made a mistake on the abacus!