The system is broken because of the introduction of the nations league. The top European teams will get always to play each other and not lose so much points, meanwhile the rest European teams or African teams or Asian teams will play lower ranking teams therfore they will not get the chance to step ahead even if they perform well.
The system works both ways so a top European team doesn’t loose many points for a loss but also doesn’t gain many points either against a top ranked team. The problem is when Fifa transferred to the new system.
@@1998Cebola It is in FIFAs interest to not do that, but rather hype up other countries for more viewership and therefore money. That's why the want to do super league and nation leagues in other continents. It's always bout money for them
The system is not broken because of the nations league. The system is broken because the other continents do not have the nations league. The rankings will eventually sort themselves out when teams of a similar level play each other regularly in competitive matches. The rankings will not level themselves out in seeded qualifiers because teams of a similar quality do not play each other often, and so simply the high ranked teams gain points and the low ranked teams lose them, widening a gap between teams that wasn't necessary. It will provide a good ranking per continent, but not across continents (since, expecially lower down the rankings, teams of a similar level don't play those from different continents).
A few other things to note: 1) Belgium lost 36.34 points from the loss to Morocco. I don't know where you got 13 from. You can do a simple search for fifa World rankings live and you'll find exactly where they are now and then where they'll be as a result of their next game. Belgium have dropped to 3rd (behind Brazil and Argentina) and will be overtaken by the winner of France vs England as well, so they will be no higher than 4th at the release of the next rankings. However, there's a significant gap to the Netherlands in 6th, so I highly doubt they'll go lower than 4th unless the Dutch win the whole thing. 2) Teams cannot lose points in knockout games of major competitions. It doesn't even matter if Belgium lose to San Marino in the Euro Round of 16, their ranking will be unchanged. I know they see it as a "well they shouldn't be punished for reaching the round of 16 if a similar team couldn't get there in the first place", but then you end up with a system where teams don't get accurately portrayed against teams of a similar ability. Belgium lose no ranking points for getting knocked out of the euros in the quarter finals, so their ranking doesn't get balanced accordingly. 3) The importance of the match is only considered by the level of the competition, not by the significance of the match in the competition. Brazil lost 41.5 points to Cameroon after playing their second squad because they had already qualified. They haven't made that back yet by beating all 3 of Switzerland, Serbia and South Korea. 4) Because qualification for major tournaments is seeded, large sides often avoid each other and therefore don't take ranking points off each other often. The nations league attempts to fix that, but the importance of that isn't ranked much higher than a friendly by fifa so it doesn't make much difference. To really impact the rankings, you need many matches between similar level opponents in games with reasonable importance, and that doesn't really happen, even at the world cup (because of point 2) 5) Some teams create such a gap that the importance of low end games don't really matter, even if the results may be reflective of the real rankings. Brazil have a 54 point gap at the top of the (live) rankings above Argentina, because of the low importance of friendlies, if they now lost 5 friendlies in a row against San Marino, they would still be top because they have created such a big gap at the moment (also, San Marino would only gain 1 place in the world rankings as well because they're that far behind Anguilla in 2nd bottom). 6) Regardless of matches played between teams of a similar ability, the rankings will only ever accurately represent the rankings of each continent rather than the world as a whole. This is because teams don't play enough games against opponents from different continents, especially in competitive matches, and may only occur in a seeded setting such as the world cup where the opponents aren't necessarily of a similar ability. New Zealand are currently the best team in Oceania, but are ranked 105th in the world because they rarely play teams outside of Oceania. They lost their 3rd place playoff to Costa Rica 1-0, who are ranked 32nd in the world. Similar ranked teams in North America include Trinidad and Tobago and Guatemala, teams New Zealand would likely beat by a large margin. Kosovo have 0.01 more ranking points than Tajikistan. These teams aren't really comparable at all. 7) Your ranking is based on your previous ranking. If Belgium decide to sit out for the next 3 years and only play friendlies vs the worst 50 teams in the world, and didn't get results against them, their ranking would still be very high because they started with a high ranking and they played low importance matches. If Indonesia got those exact same results, they would more likely filter out where they belong. Fixes: Give more importance to nations league matches Make all continents have nations league (maybe join OFC with AFC and North and South America together) Have each continent's nations league then qualify for the global nations league Allow teams to still lose ranking points in knockout games, but maybe only halve the amount lost Seed competitions based on previous years standings (rather than the world ranking), to allow more chance for teams with similar rankings to play each other. The euros already does this based on the nations league standings. Extend it to all qualifying campaigns Take into account the probability of the match having an effect on the standings as part of the importance of the match
Bro, thanks for your contribution, I asked ChatGPT to summarize your text to help busy people: " This comment is criticizing FIFA's ranking system for national teams. They are pointing out several issues with the system. One is that teams can lose points in matches that are not competitive. They also point out that the ranking system does not accurately reflect how good teams are compared to other teams worldwide, especially teams from other continents. They also mention that teams that are already strong will maintain a high ranking even if they play poorly, while weaker teams will not be able to move up the rankings. They suggest several fixes such as giving more importance to nations league matches, and making all continents have nations league. "
To have a functional ELO system you need a lot of fixtures. 62 fixtures in 4 years is insufficient. The ELO system would work perfectly, and I doubt Belgium would be second, if the fixtures were 1 000.
An assumption of Elo is that the underlying strength of the teams varies very slowly in terms of the number of games played, otherwise it is hard for the algorithm to track the moving value. This doesn’t work for international football because a team can have a considerably different strength to what they had a few dozen games ago. You need to go on a serious win streak or lose to multiple poor teams to make large changes in your Elo when it is already a large number.
Bit disappointed in the commentary and the comments below in response to Jon's expert clarification on how the FIFA rankings work. FIFA rankings aren't rigged, Belgium have a nearly 90% win rate over 4 years of playing games, but maybe there is something to be done about re-shifting or soft resetting Elo (just like in your Rocket Leagues or other video games). Super insightful, and really interesting.
The parameter I (weight of the match) basically determines how fast (or slow) teams can gain or lose points. I personally think that a slight increase in this weight would make for a better representation of reality in the ranking.
They should do a weighted ranking also. I would use a 4-year ranking but the current years should be more weighted to make it fair. For example, I would use the same method they use in Cricket where the last two years' matches would be counted as 100% and the 2 years before that as 50%. This would take into teams' progression and changes in players or players' age more. For example, everyone knew that Belgium was in the decline because of the players' age but they did not take that into account and we even saw that they had two losses right before WC. If we had a weighted ranking, all of this would be taken into account and Belgium would not be ranked as high.
Errmm France only loss ever to Luxembourg was back in 1915. Since World Cup 2018, they have lost eight times to ①the Netherlands, ②Turkey, ③Finland, ④Switzerland (at Euro 2020), ⑤Denmark, ⑥Croatia, ⑦Denmark again and most recently ⑧Tunisia (at World Cup 2022).
Belgium is there because it has been one of the best teams in the world for years now. What will follow is a drop to 5th ranking after the World Cup. And then we will see if they keep winning games or losing games. As for every other country
The ranking system is designed to evaluate a team's likelihood of winning. The team that is currently in first place is expected to perform well against the team in second place. However, if they fail to do so, they may lose points, allowing the second-place team to potentially take their place at the top of the rankings. This ranking system ensures that the team with the highest probability of winning is consistently at the top.
Ranking has an effect, for example England has a rule that for a player to get a permit to play in Premier League, the player's national team has to be ranked among the top 50
The ,,Nations League,, is even a bigger parody than people think because it fucks over every national team not based in Europe or teams that make up point in South America in COPA like Brazil and Argentina. Basically you will never be at the top if you arent based in those 2 continents. Europe or South America
I think they are using the ELO RATING that was used for chess tournament to decide team strength. The points accumulated I think represent their team ratings. I saw a video by Balon. Just my theory
I had a similar conversation during the womens euro's as both Spain and Sweden ranked above England. Sweden based on the Olympics (Britain's game not counting) whilst Spain had nothing to show from tournament play while England had been semi finalists at the previous 3 competition's. Absolute nonsense.
I genuinely cannot imagine why Belgium wasted this team on Roberto Martinez. He's not even a premier league level manager and he managed to cling on to one of the most talented group of players and ruin them
Because most national teams don't have good coaches. Spain and the Dutch are the only teams in this World Cup with actual World class coaches. Maybe Scaloni, but that's it.
@@ryanergo754 there are dozens of managers that are better than Martinez that were available when he was hired. You don't need a world class manager, but you do need someone that has some level of tactical acumen and flexibility. Martinez not only has neither, but would also struggle inthe championship
A lot of things are going on : There a very good teams that have problems within their federations and just lose games on purpose against easy teams, and when they finally need to win against a bigger team in a major competition, they win..and everybody wonders how.. The news don't always speak the truth: sometimes they pump things up just to create a story. They might "create" a superteam, only for that superteam to lose by 3 goals from a weak team. Fifa Rankings: what is on paper is not always right. If it was, go bet who the winner of the world cup or euro will be from now. Some teams try to cheat the system just to get points, but when the time comes, they lose the most important games. Those who follow football know who the best and weak teams are. They see results
"FIFA Rankings Explained" You did almost nothing in terms of explaining how they actually work, it was just a 10 minute critique on a system that none of you ever actually made clear that you understand how it works. Its not even complicated boys, if you're gonna critique something at least ensure you understand it first.
Belgium won't be in the top 3 after the world cup, possibly even the top 5. Other countries are doing so much better, it's sad to see Belgium die out with a whimper.
The problem with Elo ratings are that they work on the assumption that each contest is being played with equal levels of competitiveness by both teams, so there’s no way of accounting for one team fielding a B team or playing an experimental system. The algorithm assumes both parties are trying their best.
That's not quite true. The problem with ELO is that it was invented for chess. A sport with a singular individual and with regular games. A chess player can lose 100 ELO points in a month. That's because they're playing consistent amount of times and they're an individual. Individuals don't instantly plummit in skill because a few key players got weaker.
@@thetrain47539 I agree that this is an issue too - most "football teams" are actually different entities from game to game. That said, I do think a problem with any kind of a results-based rating system is that they have to assume that both "sides" are putting in identical levels of effort, and that includes both effort on the pitch and squad selection - if one side is taking the game more seriously than the other, it creates a distorted view of their relative abilities which a human observer might instantly notice but which a context-agnostic algorithm would not
This is not true at all. The matches are weighted differently through the parameter I. I= 05 Friendly matches played outside of International Match Calendar windows I= 10 Friendly matches played during International Match Calendar windows I= 15 Group phase matches of Nations League competitions I= 25 Play-off and final matches of Nations League competitions I= 25 Qualification matches for Confederations final competitions and for FIFA World Cup final competitions I= 35 Confederation final competition matches up until the QF stage I= 40 Confederation final competition matches from the QF stage onwards; all FIFA Confederations Cup matches I= 50 FIFA World Cup final competition matches up until QF stage I= 60 FIFA World Cup final competition matches from QF stage onwards As you can see, a world cup match is 5 times more important than a friendly
More importantly, there shouldn't be pots for World cup and Euros groups and qualifying. It just guarantees the best teams that they'll play weaker opposition. France should have the exact same chance of drawing Brazil in their world cup group as they do Cameroon.
No, the pots make it better. I don't want a group stage where the best 4 teams are in one group while the worst 4 are in another group. World Cup grouping is nice, it's just they have to have a better ranking system and give more importance to championships.
@@faruquekhan3353 but to get a better rank you need to do better in tournaments which is harder for pot 3 and 4 teams because they always get the best teams in their groups. Makes no sense
@@danielcooper3868 But they get a mixture of teams. You want a final match where ideally the best two teams will play against each other or at least #1 vs one of the top 4. You don't want a final where the best team plays against a weak team and the weak team only made it because of the luck of draw. If the pot 3 and pot 4 teams want better ranking then they should just beat the teams and show that they are better than them, they should not be allowed to just play against weak teams and move up the tournaments. And as much as I support Asian and African teams, I would say a lot of those teams are even lucky to be in the WC and if those teams were in Europe they would not even qualify for the WC and now you want them to play against weak teams in the WC so they can move ahead, that is extremely unfair. I like the way they do the bracket in the WC, it makes sense perfectly where each group you have a mixture of strong, average, and weak teams. The problem is the way they do the rankings which are flawed.
Belgium never fid anything Their biggest thing in history is a become 3rd in world cup(2018) Against better side they mostly dont play well The top 5 nations at least should be from nations who get to the finals in the last 4 years Belgium isnt good enough for a country who is ranked top5 in the world
The ironic thing about people giving out about this objective measure is that they are using their subjective opinions. There's a formula to the calculations and it isn't hard to find and work through. You can disagree with the formula and the variables but arguing from your subjectivity about a different perceived subjectivity is hilariously ironic
Friendlies should not factor in at all, they should be there to try out players and tactics. A friendly loss doesn't actually mean anything, nor should it.
National teams don't play enough official matches to give them a proper rating just based on those, especially since teams don't lose points in knockouts.
So FIFA rankings are crap, and they even try hard to develop this special system that gives crap results. Fabulous. That was very educational video, seriously,, you guys know your stuff.
I think Belgium on the max ranking they should have been ranked 3rd of 4th in the world given they finished 3rd place in Russia. It did not make much sense why they were world's 1 and 2 in the world. The Elo world football rankings had a better evaluation of the fools gold generation or bronze generation of Belgium.
@@watson3001 you mean the only national teams that currently hold trophies. there are many others that hold trophies from the past. well it's simple, unlike chess, football is riddled with upsets, and creating a fictional table in which teams are rated by an elo ranking is just useless, since you don't get any rewards for doing well in such a table. in chess if you are rated highly enough you will get called up for tournaments, in football you have to qualify by winning, and when you get knocked out of a tournament you won nothing even though you are ranked nr1. this whole sport is focused on trophies hence counting trophies is more precise. and nations get to choose who they play friendlies with, how tf can fifa rate such games is beyond me. also take the mental part of football in the equation. there are teams that play well when it doesn't matter, when there is no pressure. belgium is a prime example of that. there are also teams that don't perform well at all in meaningless games but are fantastic in tournaments. croatia is a prime example of that. which type of mentality do you rate higher? which is more useful? how can you put a number on rating mentality? elo can be used in football as a talking point for media, but it has no value in itself. it doesn't represent reality, which was proven here once again, and is therefore useless. in chess elo ratings are far more precise and tell a lot of the story, whilst in football elo tells you even less than ''number of corners'' statistic in games.
@@TataMataAkrobata Is your suggestion to not have any ranking system at all? Or to use trophy data from decades ago? Both seem worse than Elo ratings in my mind Belgium slightly odd but at #2, but the rest of the top 10 was okay wasn't it?
This is a such a shit ranking tbh. Fifa is a very corrupt and money hungry corporation, I think they would much rather have Asian teams have better rankings. Idk why they want support from European nations tbh, not that they don’t need it, it’s because I feel like fifa already know how much money they’ll get from European fans and etc. It’s kinda why they probably made the 2026 World Cup 48 nations.
Give my boy a break. He’s a great foil for Joe’s kind of humour. Jon gets it and plays along. Also, he’s really had his moments of humour on the daily podcasts lately.
belgium this belgium that, in all british media there is a lot of talk about belgium. people are speaking of a great golden generation of belgian football, and are in awe by how small that country is, always hyping them up. well Belgium, as a national football side, is absolute garbage. never won anything, never even had a good tournament. Croatia, a country that didn't even exist before the 90's, and has less than 4 million citizens, have bettered them again. Croatia has a bronze and silver medal in world cups, belgium has nothing, and all one can hear about this group is nonsense about belgium. if you want to talk about small nations performing ''above what is expected'', stop even thinking about belgium and focus elsewhere. on one hand you have a nation highly ranked by a stupid chess-like elo system (that works - in chess!!), on the other hand you have a nation proven to be giant-killers in big tournaments (germany and netherlands in france 98, argentina and england in russia etc), and still the focus is on belgium for whatefver reason. I know it is difficult for english media since croatia beat england in russia, but swallow it and carry on.
Belgium got 3rd in the 2018 world cup. They lost to France 2-1 in the semis and beat Brazil and England twice during that tournament. Croatia lost 4-2 in the finals to France and needed penalty kicks to beat Denmark and Russia, then extra time to beat England. The only strong win Croatia had at the last world cup was against an Argentina team that was underpreforming and had just drawn against Iceland. If you want to be mad about Fifa rankings, just ignore them and be glad when your team upsets a higher ranked opponent.
@@Subzeropole hm, didnt they finish fourth? oh well if croatia needed extra time then that win doesn't count i guess...... i do ignore them man, its just a tad frustrating to have belgium as a constant talking point when there are nations that deserve such praise more. it's like it is now given that croatia is a dark horse, those things aren't a given in football. anyway, i give my respect to all small nations that keep producing strong teams and perform well, i liked belgium a lot during mpenza days and so on, am just annoyed now that they are somehow a big team which they never proved to be. perhaps their next genrations will do more with less pomp around them, and I'm all for that,
@@Subzeropole ah sry they did in fact beat england in the third place playoff. i have mistakenly remembered that game to be vs netherlands. so they did have a good tournament! I'm still standing by my comparison as croatia has '98 bronze and some strong euro showings (some not so much). and from my previous answer i hope you understand what really frustrates me. have a good day.
@@TataMataAkrobata Belgium got a bronze medal at Euro 1972, silver medal at Euro 1980, fourth place at WC 1986 and bronze again at WC 2018...Belgium also has multiple Quarter finals ( 4 ) and multiple Round of 16 appearances ( 5 ) So, out of 20 tournaments, Belgium managed to advance from the group stage on 13 different occasions. So, Belgium definitely has had multiple good/great tournaments
Countries are not bothered by fifa rankings the only rankings nations are interested in UEFA rankings the higher ranking the more places one get in the champions league , europa league , and conference leagues. Literaly no nation gives a F*** about Fifa Rankings . There ar now the nations leagues besides the continental tournaments and worldcup the real , measure of strength of a team , the US played canada central american and carebean island nations light weights . , not realy impresive as teams like greece , austria , denmark play against world cup and european heavy weights . The same for south america paraquay and colombia playing against chili brazil argentina uruguay . heavy weights .
You couldn't be more wrong. Smaller nations see importance in FIFA rankings because it determines whether their players qualify for work permits to play in leagues in Europe such as the Premier League. It also determines the quality of friendly games they get so they can prepare for tournaments, etc. There's no way Brazil is gonna take a friendly match against The Cook Islands when they can play Italy or Belgium in a friendly instead.
@@justincredible1990 Realy you do know rankings are useless like leagues in oceanie asia and north america and caribean you play shit leagues in a shit region . and get as many points as leagues in europe or south america . those rankings dont mean a thing.
@@marcusfranconium3392 Speak about football in the regions you know, not the ones you don't. The had a lot to do with how Concacaf seeded it's teams for the last World Cup qualifiers.
@@justincredible1990 Ehm yeah that would be all regions , concacaf is a joke , the AFC only Japan and South korea are woth a mention . and the best african leagues are Tunesië and Egypt . the OFC is even worse than the concafaf , the only regions that produce and have real football leagues are UEFA and CONMEBOL. the rest are just filllers for the worldcup .
The system is broken because of the introduction of the nations league. The top European teams will get always to play each other and not lose so much points, meanwhile the rest European teams or African teams or Asian teams will play lower ranking teams therfore they will not get the chance to step ahead even if they perform well.
It would not surprise if this is deliberate by UEFA to make sure their teams get prefereable seeding in FIFA tournaments
The system works both ways so a top European team doesn’t loose many points for a loss but also doesn’t gain many points either against a top ranked team. The problem is when Fifa transferred to the new system.
Fifa has always been eurocentric, they're basically organized euro crime
@@1998Cebola It is in FIFAs interest to not do that, but rather hype up other countries for more viewership and therefore money. That's why the want to do super league and nation leagues in other continents. It's always bout money for them
The system is not broken because of the nations league. The system is broken because the other continents do not have the nations league. The rankings will eventually sort themselves out when teams of a similar level play each other regularly in competitive matches. The rankings will not level themselves out in seeded qualifiers because teams of a similar quality do not play each other often, and so simply the high ranked teams gain points and the low ranked teams lose them, widening a gap between teams that wasn't necessary.
It will provide a good ranking per continent, but not across continents (since, expecially lower down the rankings, teams of a similar level don't play those from different continents).
A few other things to note:
1) Belgium lost 36.34 points from the loss to Morocco. I don't know where you got 13 from. You can do a simple search for fifa World rankings live and you'll find exactly where they are now and then where they'll be as a result of their next game. Belgium have dropped to 3rd (behind Brazil and Argentina) and will be overtaken by the winner of France vs England as well, so they will be no higher than 4th at the release of the next rankings. However, there's a significant gap to the Netherlands in 6th, so I highly doubt they'll go lower than 4th unless the Dutch win the whole thing.
2) Teams cannot lose points in knockout games of major competitions. It doesn't even matter if Belgium lose to San Marino in the Euro Round of 16, their ranking will be unchanged. I know they see it as a "well they shouldn't be punished for reaching the round of 16 if a similar team couldn't get there in the first place", but then you end up with a system where teams don't get accurately portrayed against teams of a similar ability. Belgium lose no ranking points for getting knocked out of the euros in the quarter finals, so their ranking doesn't get balanced accordingly.
3) The importance of the match is only considered by the level of the competition, not by the significance of the match in the competition. Brazil lost 41.5 points to Cameroon after playing their second squad because they had already qualified. They haven't made that back yet by beating all 3 of Switzerland, Serbia and South Korea.
4) Because qualification for major tournaments is seeded, large sides often avoid each other and therefore don't take ranking points off each other often. The nations league attempts to fix that, but the importance of that isn't ranked much higher than a friendly by fifa so it doesn't make much difference. To really impact the rankings, you need many matches between similar level opponents in games with reasonable importance, and that doesn't really happen, even at the world cup (because of point 2)
5) Some teams create such a gap that the importance of low end games don't really matter, even if the results may be reflective of the real rankings. Brazil have a 54 point gap at the top of the (live) rankings above Argentina, because of the low importance of friendlies, if they now lost 5 friendlies in a row against San Marino, they would still be top because they have created such a big gap at the moment (also, San Marino would only gain 1 place in the world rankings as well because they're that far behind Anguilla in 2nd bottom).
6) Regardless of matches played between teams of a similar ability, the rankings will only ever accurately represent the rankings of each continent rather than the world as a whole. This is because teams don't play enough games against opponents from different continents, especially in competitive matches, and may only occur in a seeded setting such as the world cup where the opponents aren't necessarily of a similar ability. New Zealand are currently the best team in Oceania, but are ranked 105th in the world because they rarely play teams outside of Oceania. They lost their 3rd place playoff to Costa Rica 1-0, who are ranked 32nd in the world. Similar ranked teams in North America include Trinidad and Tobago and Guatemala, teams New Zealand would likely beat by a large margin. Kosovo have 0.01 more ranking points than Tajikistan. These teams aren't really comparable at all.
7) Your ranking is based on your previous ranking. If Belgium decide to sit out for the next 3 years and only play friendlies vs the worst 50 teams in the world, and didn't get results against them, their ranking would still be very high because they started with a high ranking and they played low importance matches. If Indonesia got those exact same results, they would more likely filter out where they belong.
Fixes:
Give more importance to nations league matches
Make all continents have nations league (maybe join OFC with AFC and North and South America together)
Have each continent's nations league then qualify for the global nations league
Allow teams to still lose ranking points in knockout games, but maybe only halve the amount lost
Seed competitions based on previous years standings (rather than the world ranking), to allow more chance for teams with similar rankings to play each other. The euros already does this based on the nations league standings. Extend it to all qualifying campaigns
Take into account the probability of the match having an effect on the standings as part of the importance of the match
to sum up what this guy said belgium are crap now
NZ totally outclassed costa rica and were robbed by poor refereeing
Dont look up fifa ranking live. Scam websites with viruses
thanks now i dont have to watch the video lol
Bro, thanks for your contribution, I asked ChatGPT to summarize your text to help busy people:
"
This comment is criticizing FIFA's ranking system for national teams. They are pointing out several issues with the system. One is that teams can lose points in matches that are not competitive. They also point out that the ranking system does not accurately reflect how good teams are compared to other teams worldwide, especially teams from other continents. They also mention that teams that are already strong will maintain a high ranking even if they play poorly, while weaker teams will not be able to move up the rankings. They suggest several fixes such as giving more importance to nations league matches, and making all continents have nations league.
"
To have a functional ELO system you need a lot of fixtures. 62 fixtures in 4 years is insufficient. The ELO system would work perfectly, and I doubt Belgium would be second, if the fixtures were 1 000.
Then we need a different system.
An assumption of Elo is that the underlying strength of the teams varies very slowly in terms of the number of games played, otherwise it is hard for the algorithm to track the moving value. This doesn’t work for international football because a team can have a considerably different strength to what they had a few dozen games ago. You need to go on a serious win streak or lose to multiple poor teams to make large changes in your Elo when it is already a large number.
Bit disappointed in the commentary and the comments below in response to Jon's expert clarification on how the FIFA rankings work. FIFA rankings aren't rigged, Belgium have a nearly 90% win rate over 4 years of playing games, but maybe there is something to be done about re-shifting or soft resetting Elo (just like in your Rocket Leagues or other video games). Super insightful, and really interesting.
yeah, occasional "soft" resets (to not completly destroy the ranking everytime an adjustment is needed) is probably the way to go
How would they go about doing that?
Elo>Fifa
The parameter I (weight of the match) basically determines how fast (or slow) teams can gain or lose points. I personally think that a slight increase in this weight would make for a better representation of reality in the ranking.
They should do a weighted ranking also. I would use a 4-year ranking but the current years should be more weighted to make it fair. For example, I would use the same method they use in Cricket where the last two years' matches would be counted as 100% and the 2 years before that as 50%. This would take into teams' progression and changes in players or players' age more. For example, everyone knew that Belgium was in the decline because of the players' age but they did not take that into account and we even saw that they had two losses right before WC. If we had a weighted ranking, all of this would be taken into account and Belgium would not be ranked as high.
The ranking systems before the 2018 World Cup were weighted by time. The rankings since 2018 is based on a modified Elo system.
Errmm France only loss ever to Luxembourg was back in 1915. Since World Cup 2018, they have lost eight times to ①the Netherlands, ②Turkey, ③Finland, ④Switzerland (at Euro 2020), ⑤Denmark, ⑥Croatia, ⑦Denmark again and most recently ⑧Tunisia (at World Cup 2022).
The ATP finals aren’t in the O2 anymore! They get played in Turin now
Belgium is there because it has been one of the best teams in the world for years now. What will follow is a drop to 5th ranking after the World Cup. And then we will see if they keep winning games or losing games. As for every other country
Concacfa qualifiers now give a considerably easier path tho WC qualification depending on the ranking
VS Morocco, it's negative 36. Check the platform providing points changes (football-ranking).
The ranking system is designed to evaluate a team's likelihood of winning. The team that is currently in first place is expected to perform well against the team in second place. However, if they fail to do so, they may lose points, allowing the second-place team to potentially take their place at the top of the rankings. This ranking system ensures that the team with the highest probability of winning is consistently at the top.
Ranking has an effect, for example England has a rule that for a player to get a permit to play in Premier League, the player's national team has to be ranked among the top 50
Not even close mate. How would Auba play? I briefly believe Gabon ain't in the top 50
@@vagg3r105 He is born in France and has french citizenship
@@Re55ur3cT I came here to say exactly this. Such a first world thing to disregard this factor lol.
The ,,Nations League,, is even a bigger parody than people think because it fucks over every national team not based in Europe or teams that make up point in South America in COPA like Brazil and Argentina. Basically you will never be at the top if you arent based in those 2 continents. Europe or South America
I think they are using the ELO RATING that was used for chess tournament to decide team strength. The points accumulated I think represent their team ratings. I saw a video by Balon.
Just my theory
I had a similar conversation during the womens euro's as both Spain and Sweden ranked above England. Sweden based on the Olympics (Britain's game not counting) whilst Spain had nothing to show from tournament play while England had been semi finalists at the previous 3 competition's. Absolute nonsense.
I genuinely cannot imagine why Belgium wasted this team on Roberto Martinez. He's not even a premier league level manager and he managed to cling on to one of the most talented group of players and ruin them
I’m terrified of the prospect of him coming back to manage Everton . Can see it happening if Lampard loses a few more games
Because most national teams don't have good coaches. Spain and the Dutch are the only teams in this World Cup with actual World class coaches. Maybe Scaloni, but that's it.
@@ryanergo754 there are dozens of managers that are better than Martinez that were available when he was hired. You don't need a world class manager, but you do need someone that has some level of tactical acumen and flexibility. Martinez not only has neither, but would also struggle inthe championship
A lot of things are going on :
There a very good teams that have problems within their federations and just lose games on purpose against easy teams, and when they finally need to win against a bigger team in a major competition, they win..and everybody wonders how..
The news don't always speak the truth: sometimes they pump things up just to create a story. They might "create" a superteam, only for that superteam to lose by 3 goals from a weak team.
Fifa Rankings: what is on paper is not always right. If it was, go bet who the winner of the world cup or euro will be from now. Some teams try to cheat the system just to get points, but when the time comes, they lose the most important games.
Those who follow football know who the best and weak teams are. They see results
"FIFA Rankings Explained"
You did almost nothing in terms of explaining how they actually work, it was just a 10 minute critique on a system that none of you ever actually made clear that you understand how it works.
Its not even complicated boys, if you're gonna critique something at least ensure you understand it first.
It’s a monthly bracket and their weighted average opponent is why.
Belgium won't be in the top 3 after the world cup, possibly even the top 5.
Other countries are doing so much better, it's sad to see Belgium die out with a whimper.
lol
1. Croatia
2. France
3. Marocco
4. Argentina
The problem with Elo ratings are that they work on the assumption that each contest is being played with equal levels of competitiveness by both teams, so there’s no way of accounting for one team fielding a B team or playing an experimental system. The algorithm assumes both parties are trying their best.
That's not quite true. The problem with ELO is that it was invented for chess. A sport with a singular individual and with regular games. A chess player can lose 100 ELO points in a month. That's because they're playing consistent amount of times and they're an individual. Individuals don't instantly plummit in skill because a few key players got weaker.
@@thetrain47539 I agree that this is an issue too - most "football teams" are actually different entities from game to game. That said, I do think a problem with any kind of a results-based rating system is that they have to assume that both "sides" are putting in identical levels of effort, and that includes both effort on the pitch and squad selection - if one side is taking the game more seriously than the other, it creates a distorted view of their relative abilities which a human observer might instantly notice but which a context-agnostic algorithm would not
@@nt300uk you assume that a rank based system needs to know things that are impossible to calculate?
@@thetrain47539 What I'm saying is that the flaw with any kind of ranking system is that it needs to make unwarranted assumptions
This is not true at all. The matches are weighted differently through the parameter I.
I= 05 Friendly matches played outside of International Match Calendar windows
I= 10 Friendly matches played during International Match Calendar windows
I= 15 Group phase matches of Nations League competitions
I= 25 Play-off and final matches of Nations League competitions
I= 25 Qualification matches for Confederations final competitions and for FIFA World Cup final competitions
I= 35 Confederation final competition matches up until the QF stage
I= 40 Confederation final competition matches from the QF stage onwards; all FIFA Confederations Cup matches
I= 50 FIFA World Cup final competition matches up until QF stage
I= 60 FIFA World Cup final competition matches from QF stage onwards
As you can see, a world cup match is 5 times more important than a friendly
More importantly, there shouldn't be pots for World cup and Euros groups and qualifying. It just guarantees the best teams that they'll play weaker opposition. France should have the exact same chance of drawing Brazil in their world cup group as they do Cameroon.
Without pots for qualifying you would just end up with European and South American teams competing , a few african and 1-2 teams from Asia
No, the pots make it better. I don't want a group stage where the best 4 teams are in one group while the worst 4 are in another group. World Cup grouping is nice, it's just they have to have a better ranking system and give more importance to championships.
@@big_pud well no, they'd still qualify through their continent so you'd have the same representation amounts from each continent
@@faruquekhan3353 but to get a better rank you need to do better in tournaments which is harder for pot 3 and 4 teams because they always get the best teams in their groups. Makes no sense
@@danielcooper3868 But they get a mixture of teams. You want a final match where ideally the best two teams will play against each other or at least #1 vs one of the top 4. You don't want a final where the best team plays against a weak team and the weak team only made it because of the luck of draw. If the pot 3 and pot 4 teams want better ranking then they should just beat the teams and show that they are better than them, they should not be allowed to just play against weak teams and move up the tournaments. And as much as I support Asian and African teams, I would say a lot of those teams are even lucky to be in the WC and if those teams were in Europe they would not even qualify for the WC and now you want them to play against weak teams in the WC so they can move ahead, that is extremely unfair. I like the way they do the bracket in the WC, it makes sense perfectly where each group you have a mixture of strong, average, and weak teams. The problem is the way they do the rankings which are flawed.
Belgium never fid anything
Their biggest thing in history is a become 3rd in world cup(2018)
Against better side they mostly dont play well
The top 5 nations at least should be from nations who get to the finals in the last 4 years
Belgium isnt good enough for a country who is ranked top5 in the world
True and sad
Just use the worldcup result with some extra points from regional competitions n it ll more accurate than this
The ironic thing about people giving out about this objective measure is that they are using their subjective opinions. There's a formula to the calculations and it isn't hard to find and work through. You can disagree with the formula and the variables but arguing from your subjectivity about a different perceived subjectivity is hilariously ironic
This makes no sense because it's already 100% clear Belgium won't be second in the next rankings. They might not even be in the top-5.
Friendlies should not factor in at all, they should be there to try out players and tactics. A friendly loss doesn't actually mean anything, nor should it.
National teams don't play enough official matches to give them a proper rating just based on those, especially since teams don't lose points in knockouts.
@@ryanergo754 Okay, but I still think there has to be a better system. Maybe individual player ratings should be factored in more, if that's possible.
So FIFA rankings are crap, and they even try hard to develop this special system that gives crap results. Fabulous. That was very educational video, seriously,, you guys know your stuff.
BELGIA,ITALY,DENMARK and GERMANY should not be in top ten,and in front of the CROATIA.Show some respect to CROATIA.
It is a Fifa list of October, after the Worldcup there will another list, don't cry
Why not 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss. Then divide points by the games?
England 2023 fixtures
England 47272 - 0 San Marino
England 72351561 - 0 Tuvalu
England 25642116 - 1 Djibouti
England 902156 - 0 Cayman Islands
So this FIFA rank is basically your nation MMR
Shoutout my rocket league bro
World Cup - only few matches made a world champions.... So according to u this is a perfect system .
Elo ratings look closer to reality apart from Spain.
some other nerd teams; Borussia Dorkmund, Nerdcastle United, Paris Saint Geekman, OGC Niche, Depoindexter La Coruna, Real Madweeb, MKE Anorakgücü
Those were fucking awful
no excuse for Belgium to be second for like 5 years when they have won jack shit
Belgium now dropped to 10th if we look into elo ranking. Let's just prefer & follow Elo rating instead of FIFA BS ranking pal
Elo rating is still bad.
@@yamadakaito764 better than FIFA ranking systen
Belgium should rank 100 in the world
Why so sour, man? Such a small country doing so well is exceptional. Same goes for Croatia.
I think Belgium on the max ranking they should have been ranked 3rd of 4th in the world given they finished 3rd place in Russia. It did not make much sense why they were world's 1 and 2 in the world. The Elo world football rankings had a better evaluation of the fools gold generation or bronze generation of Belgium.
This is poor system for analyzing current form
How tf is Croatia not in top 10
they are. 7th now
"Belgium are second because they win loads". "So you're saying the system is broken?".....
Elo rankings are actually a really good system
yes, for chess. for football, counting trophies is a much more precise system.
@@TataMataAkrobata How is counting trophies precise? The only teams with major trophies are France, Senegal Argentina and Italy.
@@watson3001 you mean the only national teams that currently hold trophies. there are many others that hold trophies from the past. well it's simple, unlike chess, football is riddled with upsets, and creating a fictional table in which teams are rated by an elo ranking is just useless, since you don't get any rewards for doing well in such a table. in chess if you are rated highly enough you will get called up for tournaments, in football you have to qualify by winning, and when you get knocked out of a tournament you won nothing even though you are ranked nr1. this whole sport is focused on trophies hence counting trophies is more precise. and nations get to choose who they play friendlies with, how tf can fifa rate such games is beyond me. also take the mental part of football in the equation. there are teams that play well when it doesn't matter, when there is no pressure. belgium is a prime example of that. there are also teams that don't perform well at all in meaningless games but are fantastic in tournaments. croatia is a prime example of that. which type of mentality do you rate higher? which is more useful? how can you put a number on rating mentality? elo can be used in football as a talking point for media, but it has no value in itself. it doesn't represent reality, which was proven here once again, and is therefore useless. in chess elo ratings are far more precise and tell a lot of the story, whilst in football elo tells you even less than ''number of corners'' statistic in games.
@@TataMataAkrobata Is your suggestion to not have any ranking system at all? Or to use trophy data from decades ago? Both seem worse than Elo ratings in my mind
Belgium slightly odd but at #2, but the rest of the top 10 was okay wasn't it?
@@TataMataAkrobata honest to god, that might be one of the most bizarre suggestions I've read in a long time lmao
This is a such a shit ranking tbh.
Fifa is a very corrupt and money hungry corporation, I think they would much rather have Asian teams have better rankings. Idk why they want support from European nations tbh, not that they don’t need it, it’s because I feel like fifa already know how much money they’ll get from European fans and etc.
It’s kinda why they probably made the 2026 World Cup 48 nations.
Actually there is an ELO rating specifically about football that's not FIFA's, they put them 5th before the WC, now they are falling to 10th
I don’t think Jon has ever cracked a joke in his life, bro is a comedic black hole
You have to be if you work with numbers.
@MB Why are you watching/listening then?
Give my boy a break. He’s a great foil for Joe’s kind of humour. Jon gets it and plays along. Also, he’s really had his moments of humour on the daily podcasts lately.
Cause they're Pinkoid Europe
belgium this belgium that, in all british media there is a lot of talk about belgium. people are speaking of a great golden generation of belgian football, and are in awe by how small that country is, always hyping them up.
well Belgium, as a national football side, is absolute garbage. never won anything, never even had a good tournament. Croatia, a country that didn't even exist before the 90's, and has less than 4 million citizens, have bettered them again. Croatia has a bronze and silver medal in world cups, belgium has nothing, and all one can hear about this group is nonsense about belgium. if you want to talk about small nations performing ''above what is expected'', stop even thinking about belgium and focus elsewhere.
on one hand you have a nation highly ranked by a stupid chess-like elo system (that works - in chess!!), on the other hand you have a nation proven to be giant-killers in big tournaments (germany and netherlands in france 98, argentina and england in russia etc), and still the focus is on belgium for whatefver reason.
I know it is difficult for english media since croatia beat england in russia, but swallow it and carry on.
Man this comment is even stupider lmao. Belgium got 3rd place in 2018? Honestly, just stop commenting for your own sake lmao
Belgium got 3rd in the 2018 world cup. They lost to France 2-1 in the semis and beat Brazil and England twice during that tournament.
Croatia lost 4-2 in the finals to France and needed penalty kicks to beat Denmark and Russia, then extra time to beat England.
The only strong win Croatia had at the last world cup was against an Argentina team that was underpreforming and had just drawn against Iceland.
If you want to be mad about Fifa rankings, just ignore them and be glad when your team upsets a higher ranked opponent.
@@Subzeropole hm, didnt they finish fourth? oh well if croatia needed extra time then that win doesn't count i guess...... i do ignore them man, its just a tad frustrating to have belgium as a constant talking point when there are nations that deserve such praise more. it's like it is now given that croatia is a dark horse, those things aren't a given in football. anyway, i give my respect to all small nations that keep producing strong teams and perform well, i liked belgium a lot during mpenza days and so on, am just annoyed now that they are somehow a big team which they never proved to be. perhaps their next genrations will do more with less pomp around them, and I'm all for that,
@@Subzeropole ah sry they did in fact beat england in the third place playoff. i have mistakenly remembered that game to be vs netherlands. so they did have a good tournament! I'm still standing by my comparison as croatia has '98 bronze and some strong euro showings (some not so much). and from my previous answer i hope you understand what really frustrates me. have a good day.
@@TataMataAkrobata
Belgium got a bronze medal at Euro 1972, silver medal at Euro 1980, fourth place at WC 1986 and bronze again at WC 2018...Belgium also has multiple Quarter finals ( 4 ) and multiple Round of 16 appearances ( 5 )
So, out of 20 tournaments, Belgium managed to advance from the group stage on 13 different occasions.
So, Belgium definitely has had multiple good/great tournaments
They max 8-10. Portugal above them. Holland and Denmark bellow them. Belgium is washed.
Fifa rankings are a bunch of elitism bs those people don’t really care about the love of the game just the da*n numbers.
Countries are not bothered by fifa rankings the only rankings nations are interested in UEFA rankings the higher ranking the more places one get in the champions league , europa league , and conference leagues.
Literaly no nation gives a F*** about Fifa Rankings . There ar now the nations leagues besides the continental tournaments and worldcup the real , measure of strength of a team , the US played canada central american and carebean island nations light weights . , not realy impresive as teams like greece , austria , denmark play against world cup and european heavy weights .
The same for south america paraquay and colombia playing against chili brazil argentina uruguay . heavy weights .
You couldn't be more wrong. Smaller nations see importance in FIFA rankings because it determines whether their players qualify for work permits to play in leagues in Europe such as the Premier League.
It also determines the quality of friendly games they get so they can prepare for tournaments, etc. There's no way Brazil is gonna take a friendly match against The Cook Islands when they can play Italy or Belgium in a friendly instead.
@@justincredible1990 Realy you do know rankings are useless like leagues in oceanie asia and north america and caribean you play shit leagues in a shit region . and get as many points as leagues in europe or south america . those rankings dont mean a thing.
@@marcusfranconium3392 Speak about football in the regions you know, not the ones you don't.
The had a lot to do with how Concacaf seeded it's teams for the last World Cup qualifiers.
@@justincredible1990 Ehm yeah that would be all regions , concacaf is a joke , the AFC only Japan and South korea are woth a mention . and the best african leagues are Tunesië and Egypt . the OFC is even worse than the concafaf , the only regions that produce and have real football leagues are UEFA and CONMEBOL. the rest are just filllers for the worldcup .