The FIFA World Rankings are used daily as a widely recognised form of distinguishing which international teams are better than others. The FIFA World Rankings were started in 1992 to provide a basis for comparison of the relative strength of international sides.
But how do they work? How on earth have FIFA been able to decide that Brazil, the most successful team in history, only rank 18th, under teams such as Switzerland, Greece and Ecuador and that Haiti are a better team than South Africa and Poland? Its a rather complicated process, so take a deep breath…
The formula used is stated basically as P= M x I x T x C. Confusing right?
Well, basically, Points (P) are given when a team win a game (M) awarded with the same points that everyone is familiar to i.e Win = 3 points, Draw = 1 point and Loss = 0 points.
It only gets worse from here…
Each match is ranked for importance (I). This ranges from friendlies, which are given 1 point, all the way up to a World Cup games which yield 4 points.
Then the strength of the opposition team (T) and strength of the confederation (C) are taken into account. These are decided with their own mind boggling equations…
All of this is combined to give each international team a total, which define the position of each international side.
…phew! Did you get all that?!
For the full FIFA World Rankings visit http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/rankingtable/index.html