FIFA World Rankings: an amusing farce

If Argentina played Croatia, who would you expect to win? What about an encounter between Sweden and Norway? Would Welsh fans feel confident about beating Jordan? Scots, surely, would see their footballers as superior to those of Armenia?

Such are the type of questions, accompanied by much anguished hand-wringing, that arise each month as FIFA publish their official world rankings. This month sees Croatia take ninth place from Argentina, who drop to tenth, while Norway remain above Sweden (in 23rd and 25th places respectively). Wales, in 90th, are indeed behind Jordan (85th), while Scotland, in 52nd, are eight places in arrears of Armenia.

But it is hardly worth football fans getting excited – or despondent – about where their team is placed by the boffins. The scornful reaction of the press in this country when FIFA suggested last month that England was the world’s fourth best international team was indicative of the low regard in which the rankings are held.

The whole charade should be treated as little more than a mildly entertaining opportunity to feel aggrieved at your nation’s position. It represents the chance to exclaim indignantly to uncaring friends and colleagues that: “I can’t believe Northern Ireland has slipped below Gabon” or, somewhat pretentiously, “Isn’t it fascinating that Nicaragua have overtaken Tajikistan?”

The FIFA rankings only matter in their use for seeding teams for international tournaments and their qualification stages, meaning that discrepancies even in the lower half of the rankings can have a negative impact on those nations – and further hinder their prospects of rising in time for future tournaments.

For the UEFA qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup, for example, pot 6 contained Wales, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Kazakhstan (dubiously European, but that’s a different matter), Luxembourg, Malta, Andorra and San Marino. Wales and Iceland had the most grounds to feel aggrieved – neither team would have felt that they were worse than Azerbaijan or the Faroe Islands. Indeed Wales were actually placed joint-112th with the Faroes, who pipped Wales into pot 5 on what – alphabetical order?

Of course, there has to be a system that enables qualifying, and tournaments themselves, to be carried out (relatively) fairly. The rankings are generally accurate, and there are none of the glaringly obvious discrepancies that used to be a common feature of the system – in the early 2000s, for example, the United States benefited from the footballing paucity of most neighbouring CONCACAF nations to rise to 4th place.

But perhaps this should be based on real results, in a more direct and transparent manner than appears to be the case with the FIFA rankings. This month England slipped from 4th to 8th, and while it is generally agreed that this is a more truthful appraisal of the team’s prowess, the fall came despite two wins out of two since the August table was published.

An alternative method of seeding would be to base it on nations’ standing in the previous qualifying campaign, something that would also give far more of an incentive to teams already out of the running to qualify this time around. I’m sure this proposal has its flaws; indeed, it would probably be laughed at. But then again I’m no expert. After all, I still think that Finland are better than Sierra Leone.