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Friday, April 24, 2015

Best and worst teams to play against in May

This is based on (FIFA points for a win) / (actual effort from Elo rating).

I took into account only teams that would bring at least 200 points for a win.

Interesting (for me at least) to see one of the worst teams to play against has scheduled friendlies in May and June against two of the best teams to play against, one of them against the top team in the list below.

2018 FIFA World Cup (AFC): Minimum travel groups

Some AFC teams are worried about the travel they will face in the group stage.

I dusted off my minimum travel groups code used for the EURO 2016 draw and here's what came out.

Friday, April 17, 2015

EURO 2016 qualifying simulations (17 April 2015)

Long overdue post. And it's quite long.

As usual with competition/pot sims, I used ClubElo's expected goals formula. Games up to and including 15 April 2015.

Best 3rd most like to come out of group:


FIFA Ranking: May 2015 final preview

FIFA will publish the ranking on 7 May.

A very quiet month. Most of the changes are due to devaluation of results. Of course, there's USA's win vs. Mexico and UEFA's decision to award the Montenegro - Russia EURO 2016 qualifier to the guests.

Only one match left - a friendly:

30/Apr Suriname - Guyana

This is how the points and ranks could change for these 2 teams

Friday, April 3, 2015

2018 FIFA World Cup seeding (UEFA): 10000 simulations (3 April 2015)

See previous simulation results.

As usual with competition/pot sims, I used ClubElo's expected goals formula. Games up to and including 31 March 2015.

Very important: this is based on the fixtures list from FIFA.com. If teams schedule other friendlies things will look different.

Based on these 10000 simulations, these would be the pots. Teams are sorted by the average pot over the 10000 sims.

There are new locked teams, besides Germany and Netherlands.

2018 FIFA World Cup seeding (CAF): 10000 simulations (3 April 2015)

More info on the official format in the previous post.

As usual with competition/pot sims, I used ClubElo's expected goals formula. Games up to and including 31 March 2015.

Remember Zimbabwe were excluded. I still have them in the list, just in case they are reinstated.

FIFA Ranking: April 2015 final preview

FIFA will publish the ranking on 9 April.

Best movers:

46 - Bhutan
40 - Bermuda
33 - Timor-Leste

2018 FIFA World Cup seeding (AFC): Second round pots

The second round draw will take place on 14 April 2015 and will use the April 2015 FIFA ranking as confirmed by AFC.

With no matches left before the deadline, the pots are set.