Australia slide down in new FIFA rankings

Hutchoman this article summed up pretty much

I agree the FIFA rankings always seem to leave more questions than it answers. Not sure on the references to Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan either

All this debate about the opinion of some statistician sitting at a desk in far-off Geneva tabulating figures as they come to his/her attention. Forget the rankings, open your eyes and form your own opinion as to how your team is playing the game and "rank them" in your own head. The Socceroos????, much of a muchness in recent games. Cheers jb.

Yes, but he also says we are top of our group with one year to go. Obviously muddling things up big time

Your explanation doesn't; make a whole lot of sense, since you have made alterations to what you believe FIFA rankings "should be", based on the timing of their realise, but still use FIFA's ranking as clear example of us supposedly improving. You also got the members of a current groups wrong, listing teams from our group from the previous year of World Cup qualifying - 2016, yet you still say we are just one year from the 2018 WC. Check your facts a lot more before authoring an article here.

Not that it was written last year, but written now, using information from the previous stage last year. Why is the author penning articles likes this, and why is it still allowed on this site. Almost everything in the article is wrong.

This whole article is a pile of rubbish filled with inaccuracies. It's like someone with a vague knowledge of the game, decided to contribute and article, went and got some information, but screwed up and provided information from a year ago. We sit third in our group, a group which includes none of the nations the author mentioned. We just moved up in the rankings, not down. Not that Fifa ranking mean very much

They are very misleading, always have been

You can't make Football players out of clumsy men with big bones and small brains ;)

just nations of 1.3 billion in india and 300 million in pakistan - so basically the size of europe, north and south america in aggregate. what a silly conclusion, the more nations the worse australia gets

incorrect, they are misleading

NZ: ranked 112. No wonder they play rugby union, a "cult" sport at best in most parts of the world.

Rugby: Australia ranked 3 even though it's not played widely Cricket Tests: Australia ranked 3 even thought it's played even less widely than Rugby, with only 10 nations playing ODI: Aust #2 only 12 nations play for ranking T20: Aust #7 when 17 nations play (Afghanistan is ranked #9) Let's hope not too many nations take up cricket. Seems the more nations involved, Australia gets worse.

The Tennis ranking system is more accurate because it's one player. In a team sport the performance can change more in a short time. That's only natural. I think the FIFA rankings are quite accurate +/- 10 ranks. Australians like to dismiss the FIFA rankings because the Socceroos are not on top of the world. Aussies love to be on top of the world (Rugby, Swimming, Cricket), and if they're not, they like to blame the system...

Wikipedia has it right: "The current system has been criticised for being open to abuse. National teams can maintain a higher average score by playing fewer friendly matches, particularly against weaker opponents. For example, Switzerland were seeded for the 2014 World Cup draw, largely thanks to only playing three friendly matches in the previous year. Switzerland would have reduced their rating if they had played any more friendlies, as their average score was greater than the maximum possible score from winning a friendly match against the top-ranked nation. Romania were one of the surprise seeds for the 2018 World Cup preliminary draw after taking advice from a consultant and playing only one friendly in the year before the draw. Lastly, the use of regional strength multiplier in the ranking determination formula has been accused of further reinforcing and perpetuating the bias for and against certain regions. FIFA's use of regional multiplier has been cited as a primary reason why most teams in AFC and CONCACAF have significantly lower FIFA rankings compared to their Elo rating based rankings." The discounts for confeds other than CONMEBOL are UEFA 1% and all other confeds 15% For anyone who can stand it the method is set out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings#Current_calculation_method

This forum resembles a FFA board meeting or publicity statement- total confusion ?

I agree with Andrew Denton "As long as we beat New Zealand"

It's true about ELO and you'd have to ask why ELO-style is used for women and not the men rankings? Perhaps it's more political in keeping UEFA and CONMEBOL at the top (because it guarantees seedings for World Cups). However you can't deny these are the two strongest confederations in terms of teams, even if UEFA has weight of numbers (54 or something nations). Still this would pan out anyway if true under ELO, which for most of the top 32 nations it does. Edit - I meant to add that over time improving nations would rise up the rankings as they beat the teams above them more often. This should also occur in the FIFA mens rankings, however there is a disadvantage if your confederation co-efficient is lower due to being in AFC or CONCACAF. The relative points between a win for two teams varies greatly because of this co-efficient and is really what needs to be removed...

I always trust the ELO rankings more than the FIFA rankings. ELO rankings are not biased toward any confederation and give a more accurate reflection of true rankings and a more accurate prediction of the likely outcome of a match between 2 teams. For those that don't know, the ELO rankings were originally developed for Chess by physics professor Arpad Elo. They are more scientifically robust than the FIFA rankings.

Apart from some of the details that others have mentioned, it's also worth noting our rank of 100 in 2014 was due to us not having to go through Asian Cup qualification due to making the 2011 final and being 2015 hosts. We missed out on the multiplier to ranking points that continental qualification games give over friendlies. Having won the 2015 Asian Cup we moved down to around 64th iirc. Such are the joys of FIFA's ranking formula. They should move to a similar model to the womens rankings, which is based off the ELO formula. In any event, rankings are only worthwhile when tournament draws are determined. It's then you want to be ranked high so as not get too many higher ranked teams in your group, obviously ;-)