How did the USA get a world ranking of 5?

Question

This seems a ridiculous ranking to me given that they were clearly outclassed by 2nd ranked Czech Rep. 3-0

I don't think they are better than any of the top 20 teams.

1 Brazil
2 Czech Republic
3 Netherlands
4 Mexico
5 USA
Spain
7 Portugal
8 France
9 Argentina
10 England
11 Nigeria
Denmark
13 Italy
14 Turkey
15 Cameroon
16 Sweden
17 Egypt
18 Japan
19 Germany
20 Greece

How does the ranking system work? How are points allocated?

Shouldn't they use a better system?

Answer 1

It's way too complicated and long to explain it here (as is always the case with stupid systems of any kind). If you want to know more about FIFA rankings visit http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/rank/procedures/0,2540,3,00.html
I completely agree with you that the ranking is ridiculous. FIFA developed it in association with Coca Cola so it's not surprising :)

Answer 2

The Fifa world rankings are an absolute farce. The USA are consistantly higher than teams like Italy, England, Sweden that they just can't compete with. Spain have been in the top 5 for years, yet haven't got further than the last 16 of any competition for ages!
The formula used is overly complicated (explained on Wikipedia, see below).
A new system should be introduced - this was a system devised for chess!!!!!!!!
Having said that, I can't see a better system arriving until the collective of Jugglers, bearded ladies and clowns that make up FIFA, UEFA, etc. have been toppled.
I could rant for longer about the inadequacies of the football authorities, but I possibly wouldn't finish before our sun burns itself out!

Answer 3

The rankings will bepartly based on results from the last year or so. Considering that most of the games they would have played were qualification matches for the World Cup its no surprise they are so high up. Panama, Jamaica & El Salvador are hardly great teams.

Answer 4

The present system of allocation of points to different teams is a flop,even the fifa admitted it.They are going to change the procedure on allocating ranks.

Answer 5

Sick is'nt it usa number 5 It's all down to how many friendly games you play per year say the english premiership was down to say 17/18 teams we may get a higher rating if we play more international friendlies

Answer 6

because points are awarded per qualification games and the usa
is in the concaf regional area so the only real competition is mexico, also previous success in tournaments counts and i think the states made the last 8 (?) in japan '02 thus boosting their ranking

Answer 7

USA got rank 5 by their performance before the czech rep. match.
so you can't use only one match to rank them.
moreover czech is ranked 2nd so is normal. czech is a very good side.

Answer 8

Shouldn't the FIFA use another ranking system? Sure, but coming up with that system isn't that easy. How is it possible to compare a team's performance (say Tonga, ranked 187 in the world) with another team (let's say, Ireland--ranked 31st--because another poster mentioned them) that they've never matched up against (nor ever will, in all likelyhood)? I've included a link to the explanation of the FIFA rankings system, and it's actually a pretty easy read so you may want to just check it out. But for the sake of discussion I'll mention the some of the main points here.

The first point of business is that only the seven best results are included. Furthermore, results from the past seven years are also included, although their "weight" decreases annually until they're dropped from the equation in the eighth year.

Now, you may be wondering which kinds of matches are included in the rank, because your country may never take their friendlies seriously and just put in Joe Blow while your real players are chilling out somewhere--or more likely, playing for their club teams. Here's the list:
1. Friendlies (although they have the lowest weighting)
2. Continental Championship Preliminaries have half a weighting value more than Friendlies (think Eurocup prelims)
3. World Cup Prelims have the same value as number 2 (and so they're not weighted as heavily as some posters would have you believe)
4. Continental Championship Finals matches have 3/4 more weighting value than friendlies (or 1.75)
5. FIFA Confederations Cup matches have the same value as number 4
6. World Cup Finals matches have twice the unitary value as friendlies do.

I'd like to make just a few comments about these weightings. For all those who have pointed out the CONCACAF regional weakness (or lack of depth), it's given a reduced total point value than, say, the UEFA (who has the highest). So, hypothetically, if Ireland and Canada perform identically in every category, Ireland's ranking will be higher than Canada's because Canada isn't part of UEFA. This regional weighting is included in the system to quiet all those who might feel inclined to point out weaknesses in another region, but its sideffect is to limit the maximum possible ranking that a country might realize (Americans should note the same thing in NCAA football's BCS, where teams who aren't part of the biggest conferences are unable to make it into the biggest bowl games).

Also, countries, such as the USA, who don't participate in "Continental Championships", have fewer games of the higher weighting value to raise their results. And this, more likely than not, is why the limit of seven results is included in the ranking.

There are several other point categories where countries can amass points (such as goals scored, against, etc.), but one that I'd like to highlight is the "Home and Away games". Basically, a win on the road is worth more than a win at home. That said, countries like England and France, are going to be a little more than unwilling to travel to Africa, South America, or Asia to play a friendly; they would have very little to gain, except the chance to see a third-world country and possibly be pelted with batteries and pennies during games. So countries, like the U.S., that are forced to travel for friendlies, are at an advantage in that if they win, it looks better and if they lose, it may not even show up on the stat sheet (remember: only the top seven results are counted).

I hope that I've done an adequate job of summarizing the FIFA ranking system. I'd like to make just a few more notes before finishing:

Note: In the 2002 World Cup, France had one of the top teams in the world, but didn't make it out of their group. Quite frankly, they played horribly together and didn't deserve to make it any further. Portugal was in the USA's pool and even though they came into the World Cup in 2002 with high hopes, they played disappointingly, to say the least (and went home early). Finally, five or six of the "top 20" (or about 1 in every 4 teams) teams in the world didn't even make it through World Cup qualifying for this year's cup. What I'm trying to say is that a team's performance in the World Cup and its qualifiers isn't always a reasonable measuring stick for a team's talent/level--as I'm sure any fan of any team who "just missed the cut" will tell you.

Note: In light of some of the ranking rules mentioned above, here's why USA was ranked so high: they breezed through their qualifying, were the first team to qualify from their region (even before Mexico, who you'll find at #4 in the rankings, and who will better represent the CONCACAF region in the World Cup), and qualified earlier than they ever had previously. Next, they won the CONCACAF Gold Cup. And if all that wasn't enough to add up to their best 7 performances, they had a few friendlies that they won. As for their past 7 years, they've made it to the last three World Cups, and so they automatically have more matches at the highest weighting level to call on than other countries who haven't made it to the past two Cups.

Note: the fact that the current FIFA ranking system was made in 1993 in "co-operation with the Coca-Cola Company" doesn't mean the Coca-Cola made it. More likely than not, that means that they gave the FIFA money to have their logo there and to pay the statistics gurus to do the job. And incidentally, their names are: Dr. Markus Lamprecht and Dr. Hanspeter Stamm.

Answer 9

How the hell did that happen. Ireland are (hopefully) better then them along with every other country after and before 5. Can you tell me wher you got this bcus I want to check it out.

Answer 10

Because of their good perfomance since 2002 world cup as they were qarter-finalist.From there they put up a brilliant perfomance in their qualifiers.