FIFA WORLD RANKINGS CURRENT CALCULATION METHOD

November 14th, 2008 | by: sscouser | Comments(6)

Some Malawians are wondering why the Malawi Flames only jumped 6 places (109 to 103) considering that they beat DR Congo, Egypt and Djibouti (8-1). Meanwhile Ivory Coast are on # 28, Guinea on # 39 and Burkina Faso # 61.

Read this post and you will find the answers (WARNING: Statistics involved)

Prior to July 2006 FIFA World Rankings considered the performances of teams over an eight year period which resulted into teams’ ranking positions not correlating to their recent performances. Remember when US was ranked fourth? Yes Fourth. Was it just a way to promote the game in the U.S?

After the 2006 FIFA World Cup, a revised calculation procedure for the FIFA rankings was introduced; it is a significantly simplified procedure.

CURRENT CALCULATION METHOD

The factors taken into account in calculation of the rankings are as follows:

1. Match result

Teams’ actual scores are a result of the average points gained over each calendar year; matches from the previous four years are considered, with more weight being given to recent ones. Teams must have played at least 5 matches within the last twelve months to gain ranking points.

Win, draw or defeat
In previous years a complicated system of points allocation was used, depending on how strong the opponent was, and how large the loss margin, which allowed weaker losing teams to gain points when playing a much stronger opposition, if they managed to put up a decent match. With the new system, the points allocation is simpler: three points for a win, one point for a draw, and zero points for a loss, in line with most league systems around the world.

In the event of a match being decided by a penalty shootout, the winning team receives two points, and the losing team one point.

Result………………………………………………………Points

Win (no penalty shootout)……………………………..3
Win (penalty shootout)…………………………………2
Draw…………………………………………………………..1
Loss (penalty shootout)………………………………..1
Loss (no penalty shootout)…………………………….0

2. Match status

Different matches have different importance to teams, and FIFA has tried to respect this by using a weighting system, where the most significant matches are in the World Cup finals, and the lowest weighted are friendly matches. FIFA states that it wishes to recognise that friendlies are still important, since they make up half of the competitive matches counted in the rankings. FIFA also stated, however, that it did not plan to make any adjustment for teams that qualify directly for major tournaments.

The match status multipliers are as follows:

Match status…………………………………………………………..Multiplier

Friendly match………………………………………………………………..x 1.0
FIFA World Cup and Continental cup qualifiers……………………………x 2.5
Continental cup and Confederations Cup finals……………………………x 3.0
World Cup finals match……………………………………………………….x 4.0

3. Opposition strength

a win against a very highly ranked opponent is a considerably greater achievement than a win against a low-rated opponent, so the strength of the opposing team is a factor.
The new system uses an opposition strength factor based on team rankings. The previous system was based on points difference.

The formula used is:

Opposition Strength Multiplier = (200 – ranking position) / 100
with the exceptions that the team ranked #1 is given a multiplier of 2.00, and teams ranked 150th and below are assigned the minimum multiplier of 0.50.

Example 1: the opposition team is currently ranked 8th in the world: (200-8)/100 =1.92

so the opposition strength multiplier is 1.92

Example 2: the opposition team is currently ranked 125th in the world: (200-125)/100 = 0.75
so the opposition strength multiplier is 0.75

Example 3: the opposition team is currently ranked 188th in the world:
Below 150th, so the opposition strength multiplier is the minimum 0.50
The ranking position is taken from the opposition’s ranking in the most recently published FIFA World Ranking before the match is included in the ranking calculation.

The rankings published before July 2006 are purely historical and are not used for the new ranking calculation. Instead, FIFA went back as far as 1996 to apply the new formula and is using those new rankings for the current calculations.

4. Regional strength

In addition to the opposition strength multiplier, FIFA considers the relative strength of entire confederations in the calculation. Each confederation is assigned a weighting between 0.85 and 1.0, based on the relative performance of the confederations in qualifying for the last three World Cups. Their values are as follows:

Confederation……. …………………After 2006 WC……..Up to and including 2006 WC

UEFA (Europe)………………………………….1.00……………………..1.00
CONMEBOL (South America)………………….0.98……………………..0.99
CONCACAF (N & C America & Caribb’n)..0.85……………………..0.88
AFC (Asia)………………………………………0.85………………………0.85
CAF (Africa)…………………………………….0.85………………………0.85
OFC (Oceania)………………………………….0.85………………………0.85

The multiplier used in the calculation is the average of the regional strength weighting of the two teams:

Regional Strength Multiplier = (Team 1 regional weighting + Team 2 Regional Weighting) / 2

Assessment period

Matches played over the last four years (48 months) are included in the calculation, but there is a weighting to put more emphasis on recent results. Previously an eight year period was used. The date weighting is as follows:

Date of match………………. ………….Multiplier

Within the last 12 months…. ………….x 1.0
12-24 months ago………….. ………….x 0.5
24-36 months ago………………………x 0.3
36-48 months ago………….. ………….x 0.2

Please note that if a team doesn’t play a match in 4 years then it is eliminated from the FIFA World Rankings

Ranking formula

The final ranking points figure for a single match is multiplied by 100 and rounded to the nearest whole number. Results for all matches played in the year are averaged together (assuming at least five matches have been played). The average ranking points for the four previous years, weighted by their multiplier mentioned above, are added together to arrive at the final ranking points.

I like the FIFA Ranking better than the The World Football Elo Rating System.

The World Football Elo Rating System (http://www.eloratings.net/system.html) takes into account goal difference in a game. The weight constant (K) is increased by half if a game is won by two goals, by 3/4 if a game is won by three goals, and by 3/4 + (N-3)/8 if the game is won by four or more goals, where N is the goal difference.

When a ranking method uses a statistic, such as the goal difference, strong teams can sometimes improve their rank by manipulating that statistic. They may run up the score against weak opponent in order to improve their rank.

FIFA would rather use The Colley Matrix Method than use the The World Football Elo Rating System. The Colley Matrix Method is one of the clearest and most straight forward approaches to ranking teams. The only statistics used by this algorithm are the number of wins and losses and the number of games played for each team assuming no losses(a draw can be considered a ½ win or loss),. This simplistic approach is very effective because it does not succumb to the bias introduced by some of the other statistics that more complex algorithms use and because it inherently accounts for the strength of schedule of each team. http://meyer.math.ncsu.edu/Meyer/PS_Files/SASGF08RankingPaper.pdf

If the Flames don’t play a friendly game on FIFA sanctioned date of November 19 they may face the prospects of dropping in next month’s ranks. FIFA Ranking can be likened to Grade Point Average (GPA). It is not easy to raise your GPA from say 1.2 to 2.0 on a 4.0 scale.