In defense of the FIFA world rankingshttp://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/6894350/soccer-defense-fifa-world-rankings-michael-coxBy Michael Cox
Special to ESPN.com
Considering that the English are so often accused of overhyping their national team, it is rather odd that there is such a reluctance to accept that, at the moment, the team might be OK. This week, FIFA announced its monthly rankings of international sides. England was in fourth position -- not bad, but a surprise to many who are convinced that England should barely be scraping into the top 10.
However, rather than the news being seen as a chance for reflection or an opportunity to put England's performances into context, instead the rankings themselves got the brunt of the criticism. Widely dismissed as a farce or a joke based upon one or two debatable positions, the FIFA rankings actually do their job quite well.
This will not be a statistical piece outlining how the rankings are calculated. A wealth of resources on the Internet do that -- Football rankings is a site dedicated entirely to explanation and analysis of the rankings, while FIFA.com (in a rare moment of openness and transparency) has put out a short guide to them. Besides, a defense of the calculations would miss the point. The common complaint about the rankings is not that the statistical methodology is poor (indeed, most will be unaware of how they are calculated); it is that the rankings don't reflect the general consensus about the world's best teams.
It should be remembered that the rankings aren't designed to simply replicate the results of major tournaments; they're designed to judge teams upon results over a sustained period of time. That said, the rankings are given some credence by the fact that but for a statistical anomaly, the countries that got to the final four of the World Cup last year would be the top four in the current rankings. England's being one place ahead of Uruguay is the only discrepancy. Strangely, the Three Lions actually benefited, in points terms, from their friendly with the Netherlands being canceled because of the London riots.
But there is some logic to this. A sample of recent games is taken, and friendlies count for less than competitive games. Therefore, with the friendly postponed, the average points that England accumulated from recent games didn't fall, so the team undeservedly remained ahead of Uruguay.
That irregularity aside, with all the doom and gloom about the England national side, it is worth looking at how the other teams in the top 10 -- the sides that are often automatically assumed to be better than England -- are performing.
Sixth-place Brazil recently competed at the Copa America, where it couldn't beat Venezuela nor Paraguay, even when given two attempts. It has failed to score in five of its past 10 games. Seventh-place Italy has improved under Cesare Prandelli, but just more than a year ago, its performance at the World Cup was disastrous, as the Italians failed to win a game (or to even be ahead in a game) despite being given a very favorable draw.
Eighth-place Portugal scraped through qualifying for 2010, then scored in just one of four games at the World Cup. It also had a disastrous start to qualifying for Euro 2012 and endured a terribly messy divorce from former coach Carlos Queiroz over allegations of his disrupting a drug test. Ninth-place Argentina also struggled to qualify for 2010, and when hosting the Copa America last month, it could win only one game of four -- and that was against a Costa Rican U-23 side. Tenth-place Croatia didn't make it to South Africa last year.
Some have said they would expect any of the top 10 to defeat England, but then wouldn't you have expected Brazil to beat 44th-ranked Venezuela? Or Argentina to beat 85th-ranked Bolivia? Or Portugal to beat 76th-ranked Cyprus? Or Italy to beat 59th-ranked Northern Ireland? Or Croatia not to lose to 63rd-ranked Georgia? All these results have been in the past year and make England's "disastrous" draws against 19th-ranked Montenegro and 30th-ranked Switzerland look far from unacceptable.
That is the beauty of football: Results are never guaranteed. All of the above sides have put in poor performances, and some have major problems. The attitude of some English football fans seems to be that because Brazil and Italy have a few World Cups between them and because Argentina and Portugal possess the world's best two players, they must be better than England. They might well be in theory, but they have to show it on the pitch.
If anyone has a case that it is unfairly behind England, it might be the winners of the regional competitions. AFC champion Japan (15th), CONCACAF champion Mexico (20th) and African runner-up Ghana (36th) are all underrated in the rankings because they play weaker countries in their confederations. The statistical bias toward European and South American teams is arguably the major problem with the rankings.
This is not a defense of England. After qualifying impressively for the 2010 World Cup, England's performances in South Africa and in qualification for Euro 2012 have been uninspiring. It remains a long way behind the three favorites for next year's European Championships: Spain, Netherlands and Germany.
However, the English shouldn't assume that other countries don't have problems, and ironically, the root cause of all this is the ignorance of football in other countries that also produces a sporadic outburst of cockiness when England is playing well. So, when there's actually some empirical, statistical comparison of how international sides have been performing, we might as well give it some consideration.
Michael Cox is a freelance writer for ESPN.com. He also runs zonalmarking.net.
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