FIFA World Rankings[]
The FIFA World Rankings are an unnecessary and inaccurate grading system for football’s national teams.
Unlike other sports such as tennis where rankings count for something, in football they count for nothing. That’s probably for the best because FIFA’s World Rankings are a heap of bullshit.
Everyone knows which countries are best at football because we have tournaments for that purpose – we don’t need a complicated point-scoring system to tell us that Italy are better than Fiji.
But the World Rankings don’t even succeed in stating the obvious a lot of the time and are often hugely misleading.
In 1993 and 1995, Scandinavian timewasters Norway found themselves second in the world, while the USA were bafflingly fourth in 2006.
Israel nearly broke into the top 10 in 2008 despite the fact that they haven’t been to a World Cup since 1970 and can’t even decide whether they are in Europe or Asia.
FIFA made an effort to rectify things in 2006 when they stopped regarding a win over Aruba as equal to a win over Germany, but Wales are still below Bahrain and Burkina Faso.
The World Rankings really are a waste of everybody’s time and it’s best if people don’t ever talk about them.