OF recent Soccer loving fans of Nigeria were thrown into a frenzy when Instead of moving up in Ranking the Nation dropped from 33rd to 36th in the world. FIFA’s world rankings are intended to be an at a glance measure of a national teams standing in the world game. Listing all 208 member associations in order of strength, the monthly updates often create as much controversy as clarity.
“How can nation X have climbed places without playing?”, “Why didn’t nation Y move up a place or two after winning?” and “Are we really on the same level as ?” are all questions that seem to dominate conversation whenever the rankings are discussed.
The calculations used to decide the best to worst teams currently playing at international level have been revised in recent years and , though still complicated, allow any fan to figure out who is better, and who is best following the month’s international fixtures.
CALCULATING RANKING POINTS FROM EACH MATCH
Ranking points are given for all international ‘A’ matches, including friendlies, with results holding relevance in the overall rank for a total of 48 months.
Points are calculated using a formula which draws in four factors: the match outcome (M), the importance of the match (I), the strength of the opponent (T) and the strength of the confederation (C).
The overall points awarded to a nation are calculated as: points = (M x I x T x C).
