England on the up

[bibblebub]

http://www.guardian.c...and-rise-to-world-no4

England are now up to 4th place in the FIFA world rankings.

1 Spain
2 Germany
3 Uruguay
4 ENGLAND
5 Portugal
6 Italy
7Argentina
8 Holland
9 Croatia
10 Denmark

Hurrah!

[Duncer]

The rankings are a nonsense. England in a top ten that doesn't include Brazil and placed ahead of Argentina????

[VHG]

FIFA have a very complex process for working out World rankings, you can see the league here:

http://www.fifa.com/w...nkingtable/index.html

The rankings are worked out based on every match you play. They compare where you are in the rankings and where the team you play are in the rankings and you get "points" based on the result (so you get more "points" for beating say Brazil than you would for beating Bolivia).

Also the "value" of the points decreases over a 4 year period I think. So games you played 2 or 3 or 4 years ago also count, though you only get a percentage of their original value.

Remember we qualified top of our Euro 2012 group winning 5 and drawing 3 (unbeaten), giving us lots of ranking "points", and in our Euro 2012 group we won 2 and drew 1, again decent ranking points.

In fact it could be argued we drew 0-0 with Italy in our last match so hardly disgraced.

So in our last twelve Euro 2012 games (8 qualifying, 3 group stage and the Italy match) we are unbeaten (except the last game and only on penalties).

That is not a bad record and stands up against most teams except the very best like Germany or Spain.

[VHG]

Also note Brazil lost both their last two matches, to Mexico 0-2 and Argentina 3-4 which pushed them down the rankings.

However they were both friendlies and I think their position is false.

[Duncer]

I am not anti-England by any means, I just do not see them as the fourth best team in the world, nor anywhere near it.

[Duncer]

Just north of england.

[Wharton]

Duncer
Behave yourself
1966
England (+3 Russian Officials) 4
West Germany 2

[Duncer]

Wharton, many Scots cite the fact that they beat England at Wembley afterwards as enough to make them the new World Champions.

Well, a George Best inspired Northern Ireland beat the Scottish World Champions at Windsor Park just after that, so we must also have been World Champions :-)

[FredPuli43]

These rankings never make any sense.The US was ranked something like 13th, once, wasn't it ? The US played a lot of games in their geographical area against mighty forces like Jamaica, and somehow these games gave them a curiously high ranking.

[sir.prize]

wharton- there was only one Russian official - a linesman. The other was aCzech and the referee was Swiss.

[Duncer]

I'll go back to the same old story as regards the rankings being nonsense.

My beloved club, Linfield, have played a few International sides, (Argentina 0-1, East Germany 0-2) and they played Kenya about 12/13 years ago. Kenya were ranked 66th in the world at the time but Linfield pumped them 3-0.

This is not idle boasting on behalf of Linfield, more the point that an part-time Irish League side should not be able to beat any International side, (exceptions being maybe San Marino, Andorra), by three goals, much less one ranked 66th in the world.

[bibblebub]

the full list http://www.fifa.com/w...nkingtable/index.html shows that Scotland are just edging out Iran and Montenegro

[douglas9401]

If England have a team that's ranked number four in the world why did they leave them at home and send that other bunch to Euro 2012?

[Sipowicz]

The "Russian" linesman was from Azerbaijan!

[Duncer]

.........and I'm sure when I saw Northern Ireland play out there that the stadium was named after him?

Tofik Baramov seems to ring a bell, although I'm sure the spelling is miles out.

[Sipowicz]

Bakhramov.

[magicmick]

Good one douglas going with what you say, plus the rankings we should finish up in the semi's at the Olympics

[Wharton]

It's no matter what nationality the officials were; they all defected to England just before the final.

[Duncer]

Wharton - you're a mischief maker :-)

[Wharton]

They think it's all over Duncer, well it isn't, I'll remind them of their nefarious 66 'victory' every chance I get....and I agree about George Best & Northern Ireland being the true World Champions!!