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Friday, July 17, 2009

2014 FIFA World Cup seeding for CONCACAF teams (July 17th)

This morning I saw this post on Think it all in: Looking Ahead to World Cup Qualifying 2011.

Pompey Canuck tries, with some success, to do something similar with my 2014 World Cup seeding, but for CONCACAF.

There are a couple of mistakes in the article:

* Pompey Canuck got some parts of the FIFA ranking method right, but he forgot to divide the points won in each time frame by the number of matches
* The 13th team in the ranking gets a bye to the 2nd round, it's not random
* It's a very bad idea to play lots and lots of friendlies, especially against St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Turks & Caicos, Bahamas, Aruba as it will bring your average down

Anyway, here's the May 2011 FIFA Ranking with the usual explanations:

The preliminary draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup took place on November 25th, 2007 and used the May 2007 FIFA ranking (for CONCACAF).

Assumptions:

- CONCACAF will again have 3.5 spots
- CONCACAF will again use the same qualifying system
- FIFA will use the FIFA ranking to seed the teams

The May 2011 FIFA ranking will include matches played between May 2007 and May 2011. We already have the "0.2" and "0.3" parts (matches played between May 2007 and May 2009) - that's basically 25% of the final ranking and a bit of the "0.5" part (matches played between May 2009 and May 2010). A lot can and will change before May 2011 as there are many matches to be played involving CONCACAF teams: 2009 Gold Cup knockout stages, 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, 2010 FIFA World Cup, 2010 Caribbean Championship, 2011 UNCAF Nations Cup and plenty of friendlies.

This is the May 2011 ranking (for CONCACAF only) using matches played up to and including June 13th, 2009 and matches scheduled up to May 2009 (only those on fifa.com).

The "0.5" part is computed this way: points gained / (number of matches played + scheduled).
 1 USA                            433
 2 Canada                         354
 3 Costa Rica                     342
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 4 Honduras                       298
 5 Mexico                         293
 6 El Salvador                    215
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 7 Panama                         208
 8 Jamaica                        200
 9 Haiti                          174
10 Trinidad and Tobago            116
11 Grenada                        115
12 Antigua and Barbuda            112
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13 Guatemala                       90
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14 Cuba                            87
15 Bermuda                         80
16 Barbados                        70
17 Suriname                        63
18 Guyana                          53
18 Nicaragua                       53
20 Netherlands Antilles            50
21 Puerto Rico                     48
22 St. Kitts and Nevis             38
23 Cayman Islands                  24
24 Belize                          22
-------------------------------------
24 St. Vincent and the Grenadines  22
26 St. Lucia                       13
26 Turks and Caicos Islands        13
28 British Virgin Islands          12
29 Bahamas                          8
30 Aruba                            7
31 Dominica                         5
32 US Virgin Islands                3
33 Montserrat                       0
33 Dominican Republic               0
33 Anguilla                         0
Posted by at 10:02 AM
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3 comments:

  1. Thanks very much for doing this. Very interesting.

    Would it be too much to ask to see next month what the rankings would look like if CONCACAF decides to use the August 2011 rankings (like they should have in 2007)?

    August 2010 - July 2011 50%
    August 2009 - July 2010 25%
    August 2008 - July 2009 15%
    August 2007 - July 2007 10%

    I think this is the more likely cut-off, given the possible advantage it gives Trinidad & Tobago, who missed the 2009 Gold Cup and have performed poorly in the hex so far. Use of later rankings would devalue those games. I hate to be a cynic, but Jack Warner's stranglehold over the confederation must be taken into account.

    As far as I can tell, the major changes, aside from the inclusion of the 2011 Gold Cup, would be the devaluation of rounds 4 and 5 of the hex as well as the 2007 (10% to 0%) and 2009 (25% to 15%) Gold Cups. The value of the Caribbean Cup final stages and the UNCAF Cup would remain the same.

    Great site. I'm glad I found it. Keep up the great work.
    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice post. i was looking for such post. i learned many more about the world cup football from this blog. thanks for posting.
    ReplyDelete

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