Friday, March 22, 2013

March 2013: FIFA Ranking vs. Elo Ratings

Top 10 differences for countries with a better Elo Rating:

Team - FIFA Ranking - Elo Rating - Difference

South Sudan 200 140 60
Syria 134 79 55
Fiji 175 121 54
China PR 109 59 50
Korea DPR 102 57 45
United Arab Emirates 98 57 41
Kuwait 113 73 40
Iraq 94 55 39
Guinea-Bissau 183 146 37
Eritrea 197 163 34

Top 10 differences for countries with a better FIFA Ranking:

Team - FIFA Ranking - Elo Rating - Difference 


Central African Republic 52 116 -64
Sierra Leone 63 115 -52
Puerto Rico 123 171 -48
Algeria 34 81 -47
Haiti 51 97 -46
Dominican Republic 96 137 -41
Suriname 110 151 -41
Afghanistan 141 180 -39
Zambia 36 71 -35
Cape Verde Islands 57 92 -35

Top 50 nations only (in the top 50 in at least one of the rankings)

Top 10 differences for countries with a better Elo Rating:

Team - FIFA Ranking - Elo Rating - Difference 


Egypt 75 45 30
Poland 61 37 24
Korea Republic 47 25 22
Scotland 66 48 18
Brazil 18 3 15
Australia 39 24 15
Costa Rica 53 39 14
Ukraine 48 35 13
Sweden 21 10 11
Iran 57 46 11

Top 10 differences for countries with a better FIFA Ranking:

Team - FIFA Ranking - Elo Rating - Difference


Algeria 34 81 -47
Zambia 36 71 -35
Mali 24 51 -27
Burkina Faso 50 75 -25
Ghana 20 42 -22
Montenegro 28 47 -19
Tunisia 44 60 -16
Bolivia 37 52 -15
Hungary 32 43 -11
Greece 12 20 -8
 
Matches I would have liked to see before the next ranking:

Egypt - Central African Republic
Poland - Algeria
Korea Republic - Montenegro
Scotland - Haiti
Brazil - Greece
Australia - Bolivia
Costa Rica - Zambia
Ukraine - Mali
Sweden - Hungary
Iran - Sierra Leone

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.

10 comments:

  1. What do you mean by "Matches I would have liked to see before the next ranking" ?? Are these hypothetical match-ups? Past games? Future games? And why would you have liked to see them now??

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  2. CAF is overrated.

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  3. They are hypothetical match-ups. The reason is because of the wildly different positions of the teams in the rankings under scrutiny (Of course, this is a lot to do with FIFA's system being poor).

    For example, Iran and Sierra Leone are separated by just 6 places in the FIFA ranking, but 69 in the ELO ratings.

    Egypt are 23 places BELOW Central African Republic on the FIFA rankings, but 71 places ABOVE them in the ELO ratings - a swing of 94 places.

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    Replies
    1. Ok thanks. Speaking of Egypt (my team!), we fielded two different teams of eleven - one in each half - in our game against Swaziland the other day (which we won 10-0), so more than 6 substitutions. I'm very curious about whether the exclusion of this match from the calculations will increase or decrease our FIFA total points in the next ranking release (assuming we still beat Zimbabwe as expected (hopefully)). If Edgar or anyone can chime in on this it would be greatly appreciated :)

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    2. Andrew,
      normally when you skip a friendly in the calculation your points total rises because a friendly in general delivers less match points than a country's average for the last time frame. In this case it's the same: Egypt will have 5 FIFA points more when the friendly against Swaziland is excluded.

      With a win against Zimbabwe tomorrow your points total will then be 512.

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    3. Thanks a lot. That's good news.

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    4. @Mark

      Thanks for the explanation.

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  4. There is clearly a difference between FIFA and Elo but which one is better? You should compare them alongside the Ziaian rankings at http://www.rankfootball.com

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    Replies
    1. Richard,

      may I ask you: how would you use the FIFA-ranking for predicting the result (home-win/draw/away-win) of any arbitrary match ?

      Another question: how is the ranking at http://www.rankfootball.com calculated? Not a lot of documentation to be found on the site (to say the least)

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  5. Ed,
    I don't know how FIFA would use their rankings to predict matches.
    I think rankfootball.com has not been explained in detail online but however it is done, the ratings seem to be good.
    It also has rankings for women's football.
    I have compared the 3 mentioned ranking systems together with roonba rankings but that has been down for a while now.

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