Is it true FIFA's rankings are made with results at the last three World Cups taken into account?

How the fluff is Argentina 3rd?

Or more to the point how have Scotland climbed upto 62nd??

The fifa rankings are BS. USA and Mexico are in the top 20 because they play all their games (qualifiers etc.) against some really poor teams, giving them loads of victories and therefore rankings points. I think

The rankings take into account matches played over the past eight years and the rankings are based on the following factors: winning, drawing and losing; number of goals; home or away match; relative importance of the match; strength of the opponent; and regional strength.
Regarding match importance, a win in a World Cup finals match earns twice the amount of points of a friendly match.

To ensure teams playing more international matches are not favoured over those playing fewer, only a limited number of games are taken into consideration.

This means that the score calculated for the team's best seven matches in a year accounts for half its ranking points.

Greater importance is given to matches played in the past year (some 1,041 for 2000), but results from the previous seven years get weightings that decline progressively further back.

exact details can be found here

http://www.fifa.com/en/mens/statistics/rank/procedures/0,2540,3,00.html

Nice info mate. Cheers

quote:

Originally posted by biondo:
I thought there was weightings for teams in weak areas geographically to offset the easy points they win.

Yes but weak areas are determined by guess what FIFA rankings

Actually looking at the regions ratings factors. There is hardly a difference between any of the regions. Which goes a long way to explaining why the table is so scr wrong.

For 2005, the following weighting factors will apply:

* UEFA x 1.00
* CONMEBOL x 0.99
* CAF x 0.96
* CONCACAF x 0.94
* AFC x 0.93
* OFC x 0.93