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Friday, March 9, 2012

FIFA Women's Ranking: USA still top

This post is provided "as is". I still have problems with PSO and AET games and teams without an official ranking, but I've sent my questions to FIFA and hopefully I will get an answer soon. 

FIFA will publish the official ranking on March 16.

I've seen some people wondering if USWNT would lose the top spot in the rankings after losing against Japan in the Algarve Cup. It was close. Before March 7th, USA had only 1 point over Germany, but they got 10 more after defeating Sweden 4 - 0.

Germany needed to win 2 - 0 against Japan or by 3 goals if Japan managed to score. Final score: 4 - 3 for the Germans and USA are now 3 points ahead of them.

Japan would have needed to defeat Germany 6 - 0 in order to claim 2nd place.

Here's the top 100.

March 2012 rank - Team - March 2012 points - +/- Ranking - +/- Points


1 USA 2165 0 17
2 Germany 2162 0 19
3 Japan 2114 0 8
4 Brazil 2093 0 0
5 Sweden 2059 0 -14
6 France 2019 0 29
7 Canada 1970 0 -19
7 Korea DPR 1970 2 3
9 England 1966 -1 -17
10 Australia 1956 0 0
11 Italy 1936 0 -1
12 Denmark 1914 0 6
13 Norway 1900 -1 -8
14 Netherlands 1888 0 -9
15 Iceland 1851 0 -3
16 Spain 1842 1 1
17 Korea Republic 1840 -1 -5
18 China PR 1827 0 -4
19 Russia 1820 0 8
20 Finland 1797 0 -5
21 Scotland 1776 1 6
22 Mexico 1767 -1 -7
22 Ukraine 1767 1 0
24 New Zealand 1753 0 1
25 Czech Republic 1730 1 0
26 Switzerland 1727 -1 -6
27 Nigeria 1686 0 0
28 Colombia 1654 0 0
29 Thailand 1645 1 0
30 Vietnam 1641 1 0
31 Republic of Ireland 1636 -2 -10
32 Poland 1634 1 4
33 Belgium 1629 -1 -10
34 Argentina 1609 1 0
35 Hungary 1599 -1 -11
36 Romania 1585 0 0
37 Slovakia 1581 2 8
38 Belarus 1579 -1 -4
39 Austria 1576 -1 -1
40 Costa Rica 1567 1 10
41 Uzbekistan 1565 -1 0
42 Portugal 1557 1 2
43 Chinese Taipei 1556 -1 0
44 Serbia 1547 0 0
44 Wales 1547 2 16
46 Chile 1544 -1 0
47 Myanmar 1523 0 0
48 Trinidad and Tobago 1500 0 0
49 Papua New Guinea 1491 3 44
50 Ecuador 1484 -1 0
51 Ghana 1468 -1 11
52 Peru 1450 -1 0
53 India 1438 0 0
54 Northern Ireland 1435 0 -2
55 Bulgaria 1434 0 0
56 Equatorial Guinea 1431 0 0
56 Iran 1431 0 0
58 Paraguay 1430 0 0
59 Jordan 1405 1 0
60 Cameroon 1404 1 0
61 Haiti 1397 1 1
62 Greece 1393 -3 -20
63 Slovenia 1386 0 0
64 Israel 1380 1 0
65 Croatia 1376 -1 -8
66 South Africa 1373 0 7
67 Turkey 1356 0 0
68 Indonesia 1346 0 0
69 Uruguay 1344 0 0
70 Hong Kong 1342 0 0
71 Azerbaijan 1341 0 0
72 Bahrain 1339 2 0
73 Morocco 1338 -1 -2
73 Venezuela 1338 2 0
75 Kazakhstan 1332 1 0
76 Estonia 1328 1 0
77 Tunisia 1325 1 2
78 Algeria 1320 1 0
79 Faroe Islands 1318 1 0
80 Tonga 1316 -8 -24
81 Guatemala 1310 4 17
82 Fiji 1306 -1 0
83 Guam 1300 0 0
83 Lithuania 1300 0 0
85 Laos 1292 1 0
86 Egypt 1289 -4 -15
87 Bosnia-Herzegovina 1267 4 20
88 Philippines 1264 -1 0
89 Guyana 1256 -1 0
89 Malaysia 1256 -1 0
91 Tahiti 1238 1 0
92 Bolivia 1236 1 0
93 Dominican Republic 1225 -5 -31
94 Latvia 1220 0 0
95 Mali 1204 0 -11
96 Cuba 1201 0 1
97 Singapore 1195 0 0
97 Solomon Islands 1195 0 0
99 Palestine 1189 0 0
100 New Caledonia 1188 0 0

About me:

Christian, husband, father x 3, programmer, Romanian. Started the blog in March 2007. Quit in April 2018. You can find me on LinkedIn.

9 comments:

  1. How did you calculate this? I found the official .pdf to be very lacking.
    e.g. the function to calculate P(x) seems wrong (P(0)=1 when it should be 0.5) and how do you know the exact "scaling factor" they mention?

    It would be great if you could tell me how you did this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The P (x) formula is indeed wrong. I had to do a bit of reverse engineering to find the exact formula (same as the one used for the Elo ratings), then I used it to compute the December ranking.

    The differences are minimal.

    ReplyDelete
  3. So, it's just the just the formula of the Elo ratings? O dear, I should have thought of that myself.

    Thanks, now I can finally calculate these things myself.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "teams without an official ranking"

    There are several issues with this, as I am sure you know. I asked FIFA about this because Iraq was ranked ahead of Lebanon (in the "teams without an official ranking" list) - which is actually 2 lists - one where teams haven't played enough games, and one where teams haven't played in the last 4 years. There was consideration given to abolishing this extra part of the ranking - after all, it doesn't really show anything useful.

    Iraq was ranked ahead of Lebanon based on 3 results - all of which were defeats - 0-20 v Jordan, 0-15 v Egypt and most amazing of all - 0-9 v Lebanon!

    For some reason, FIFA has removed Jordan's first 2 matches from this Arabian tournament (20-0 v Iraq and 3-1 v Lebanon) played on 19.10.2010 and 21.10.2010 respectively, but have retained all of the rest of Jordan's games in this tournament. They've also removed Palestine 18-0 Qatar on 20.10.2010 in the same tournament and also Syria 12-0 Qatar on 22.10.2010. Qatar's 0-17 defeat to Bahrain on 18.10.2010 is OK, however, and stays on the list.

    ReplyDelete
  5. One other issue is - what are the start ELO ratings given to teams? Botswana and Tanzania, in particular, seem to have come off pretty badly in this regard. Botswana are at the bottom of the rankings, despite having posted an away victory over Olympic-bound South Africa less than a year ago, while Tanzania have recently competed at the African Championship finals, and since last year, have managed wins against Namibia (twice), Malawi, Botswana, Zambia and draws with South Africa, and Zimbabwe (twice). All this sees them just 2 positions above Iraq, who have lost all 8 matches they have ever played, with a combined goal difference of 1:73.

    Also, Tanzania are ranked 2 places below Pakistan, whose only wins have came against unranked Afghanistan (so no points for that) and Maldives, along with an awarded win against Sri Lanka. Apart from that, they've lost 12-0 and 7-0 to Nepal, and 8-0 and 6-0 to India. Hardly justifies being ranked above a team who can compete with South Africa...

    There is certainly something not quite right with the calculation of points...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Still waiting for a reply from FIFA regarding the errors...

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm still waiting on a reply regarding the problems with "initial values" and the seemingly huge amount of effort needed by Tanzania to break away from the bottom of the ranking.

    I got a reply regarding the 4 Arabian Cup matches that had been removed - there was an error with FIFA.com apparently, and the matches have now been put back on. I don't know whether the error would have been picked up automatically at the next ranking or not. I only discovered they were missing when I was writing one of the replies above...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Why Afghanistan's points did not increase after they defeated Qatar 3-0 on Feb 16?

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Anonymous

    Both Qatar and Afghanistan have a provisional ranking only.

    The ranking of a team is deemed official when they have played at least 5 matches against teams with an official ranking.

    ReplyDelete