Oh lord have mercy...
The fifa rankings as they exist now date from 1993...
As someone rightly pointed out, qualifying for the world cup in itself has no effect on our rankings, its in relation to the MATCHES we play to get there.
For the record, the matches that are going to be taken into account if i remember rightly are the win over Mexico and the two matches against Bahrain.
A quick review of how the rankings go. The rankings count the BEST 7 results in a year (meaning november to november and not january to november) for the last 8 years for a team. The most recent years results are counted at full value and for every year past, the results lose 1/8 of its value.
(In other words, our results from 8 years ago are worth one eigth of our results from this year.)
The points gained from a certain result depend on the strength of the opponent (based on its rnking at the time), the strength of its confederation (euro and south american teams are rated highest), the importance of the match (for our purposes wc qualifiers are worth the most), the margin of victory (a win by one goal gives less points than a win by 2 or 3), the venue (if the match is played away from home we gain more points).
Losing to a team has very little effect on your rankings, at best it may help the team to climb over you in the rankings, but the loss can only be integrated into *your figures* if it figures as one of your *best 7* results of the year. For Jamaica's 5-0 to be counted as one of their best 7 results of the year, they either have to have played virtually nothing since november last (not the case since they played the digicel cup and the gold cup with their last couple of qualifiers) or have had an extremely awful year. The fact that the match was a friendly makes it even more improbable that it would have given them even token points. (I also think that there is a provision to stop teams from gaining negative points from a match by rounding off to 0). On the other hand it is theoretically possible that the 5-0 loss to Argentina in the World Cup may still be among their best 7 results of that year, seeing the importance of the match, the quality of the opponent and the venue of the tournament.
Therefore, the Mexico result is certainly going to replace one of our prior best 7 this year. The bahrain win in bahrain probably is also (they were only 3 points and 2 places below us) as well as the draw those most likely are: Our 7 best results probably are
16-NOV-05 MANAMA (Bahrain) Bahrain vs. Trinidad and Tobago 0:1 (0:0)
12-NOV-05 PORT OF SPAIN (Trinidad and Tobago) Trinidad and Tobago vs. Bahrain 1:1 (0:0)
12-OCT-05 PORT OF SPAIN (Trinidad and Tobago) Trinidad and Tobago vs. Mexico 2:1 (1:1)
08-OCT-05 PANAMA CITY (Panama) Panama vs. Trinidad and Tobago 0:1 (0:0)
03-SEP-05 PORT OF SPAIN (Trinidad and Tobago) Trinidad and Tobago vs. Guatemala 3:2 (0:1)
04-JUN-05 PORT OF SPAIN (Trinidad and Tobago) Trinidad and Tobago vs. Panama 2:0 (1:0)
30-MAR-05 PORT OF SPAIN (Trinidad and Tobago) Trinidad and Tobago vs. Costa Rica 0:0
though the loss to the us (in WCQ) or the honduras (GC) draw in the us might replace the costa rica draw or the panama win
at the same time we have to look at our neighbours (in the ranking)
in front of us we had zimbabwe, ghana, togo, belgium, ivory coast, south africa, bulgaria, slovakia finland, israel, serbia montenegro, jamaica and honduras. its impossible to say which of these teams will drop without knowing what results 'drop off' their points table but its pretty safe to say that teams that either didn't play during the period or had games in which they had atrocious results aren't going to gain any points relative to us, and may even drop some.
I know for a fact that that 6-1 Jamaica gave to us in kingston back in 97 isn't going to count for them anymore, not even at 1/8 of its value...
i'll make some bold predictions knowing that i risk a lot... I don't see us gaining more than 25 points... I think between 10 and 20 is a safe estimate.
We aren't going to overtake : ghana (beat saudi (a)) , ivory coast (win romania (n), draw italy (n)), belgium (draw lithuania(a)), bulgaria (draw malta (a) win georga (h), win mexico (n), slovakia (draw russia (h)loss spain (a), draw spain (h), finland (lose cze (h) draw estonia (h)), serbie (win bosnia (h) win china (a), loss south korea (a)
We are going to overtake : zimbabwe (no activity), togo (loss iran(a), paraguay(n)), south africa (loss to senegal (h)) isreal (beat faroes (h))
i don't know about: jamaica (no activity), honduras (no activity) both 30 points ahead of us and i think that would be hoping for too much...but you never know with the point swing
Well this was sure fun....please don't hit me tomorrow
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