Socceroos Reach Highest Ranking… Again

February 22nd, 2009 | By: Pat | 2 Comments »

Not really sure how this slipped under my nose, but with the release of the latest FIFA rankings (almost two weeks ago…), the Socceroos have eclipsed their previous efforts and have soared to their highest position again.

After finishing off January as the 29th ranked team in the world, the resumption of competitive matches over the long break, and our subsequent efforts in those games, have pushed the Green and Gold to position 27th.

We remain the highest ranked Asian team, with Japan dropping three places to be 37th, and Iran at 44th.

Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Italians remain in the top four positions, with Brazil and Argentina hot on their heels.

My apologies again for the late update, I’ll set my alarm for next month’s rankings.

Tags: Argentina, Brazil, FIFA, Germany, Group F, Iran, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Socceroos, Spain, Team News

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Comments

By marco | February 23rd, 2009 at 1:55 pm

I was in shock when I noticed it a few weeks back. it will be hard to move ahead from this point as most of our games this year are against Asian teams (with world cup qual and Asia cup games). As we are the highest ranked team for the time being I think it will be hard to collect many points in the fifa rankings as the rest are below us. Even if we play the worlds best it will only be in a friendly and therefore little ranking points allocated. I just hope we make our way past the great teams in our draw this year and onto the world cup 2010 to play the best and if all goes to plan then we can build up to a top 20 spot.

It would be a funny world cup qualification series if Australia did finish on top and made it through early this time as I have become accustomed to the nail biting do or die matches we have had in the past. Please this time Australia get through on top and rest our nerves for the cup in South Africa.

Well done Australia for a great result.

Posted from United Kingdom

By Pat | February 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm

You can find out in detail how the points sytem works at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings

In a nutshell, the ranking system is a multiple of four factors, they are:
*Match results (3 points for a win, 2 for a shootout win, 1 for a draw, 1 for a shootout loss, and 0 for a loss)
*Match status (1 for a friendly, 2.5 for WC and regional cup qualifiers, 3 for regional and Confederation Cup matches, 4 for a WC final match)
*Opposition strength ((200-FIFA ranking)/100))
*Regional strength (1 for UEFA, 0.98 for CONMEBOL, 0.85 for CONCACAF, 0.85 for AFC, 0.85 for CAF, 0.85 for OFC). The regional multiplier is the average of the two teams’ regional strength.
*Then multiply this final figure by 100 to get your total points.
*Finally you take into consideration your performances over the past four years and add all the points together to get your monthly FIFA ranking position.
So for example, the recent WC qualifying draw we had against the Japanese (ranked 37th) would yield the following points:
1(match result) X 2.5 (WC qualifier) X 1.63 (opposition strength) X 0.85 (both teams are in the AFC) = 3.46375
Multiply this by 100 gives us 346.4 points for that game.
I’m pretty sure my calculation is right (Pythagoras was my homeboy) but if anyone picks up a mistake then feel free to enlighten me.

Personally I’m not that fussed about the rankings (as you can tell by my tardiness on reporting this), and I’m more interested in how the team plays individual matches. Marco, we might not get that many points for playing the Asian teams, but they’re still good hitouts for our guys and good opportunities for Pim to try things out (like playing an actual striker in his starting XI…). But still, I’d like the FFA to organise a couple of matches against top opponents so our boys can test themselves and learn things like playing from behind or holding slim leads against quality attacks.

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