http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12010_2759125,00.html
Uefa confirms draw formats
Uefa has confirmed the draw procedures for the finals of Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup qualifiers.
The news is, as expected, good for England - who will once again be amongst the top seeds for both draws - but Scotland and Northern Ireland can expect more favourable opponents following their excellent showings in their current Euro 2008 qualifying campaigns.
Uefa has confirmed that whilst Fifa’s world rankings will be used for the World Cup draw, its own coefficients, which are significantly different, would be used for the Euro 2008 finals draw.
[size=1]For Euro 2008 - should England qualify - then they are likely to be in pot two, which is the strongest pool. This is because pot one consists of co-hosts Austria and Switzerland, holders Greece - assuming they seal qualification, which seems likely - and Uefa’s highest-ranking side, which is Spain.
That leaves a likely second pot of England, Italy, France and Germany - or Portugal if any of the other four fail to make it - as they are the next ranked nations on Uefa’s system.
Should Scotland make the finals, then they would be amongst the third seeds.[/size]
For the World Cup - England, ranked seventh in Europe by Fifa, would be in the group of nine first seeds.
Scotland - currently ranked 14th by Fifa - would make the second pot, although they are within touching distance of the last place in the first pool, currently occupied by Czech Republic.
Northern Ireland’s upturn in fortunes sees them in the third group along with Republic of Ireland - and Wales are still in with a shout of making the same pot, with their current ranking of 53.
The World Cup qualifying format in Europe sees the nine group winners qualify directly for South Africa, with the four remaining spots to be competed for by the eight best group runners-up.
Draw dates:
World Cup qualifying, Durban, November 25th
So at the moment the pots for WC qualifying look like being:
Pot 1: Italy, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Croatia, Czech Republic.
Pot 2: Romania, Scotland, Greece, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Turkey, Serbia, Russia,
Pot 3: Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Israel, Bulgaria, N. Ireland, Bosnia, Switzerland, Finland.
Pot 4: Slovakia, Wales, Hungary, Belgium, Macedonia, Cyprus, Belarus, Slovenia, Albania.
Pot 5: Iceland, Moldova, Lithuania, Austria, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan.
Pot 6: Malta, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Luxembourg, Faroe Is, San Marino, Montenegro.
This is how the rankings are derived:
There are four basic criteria that affect a team’s ranking - match result, match status, opposition strength and regional strength - with a weighting system that favours more recent results.
Match result
The first criterion is, rather sensibly, the result of the games. This is applied on the basis of a slightly modified league system, not unlike most leagues in the world.
Win without a penalty shoot-out: 3 points.
Win on penalties: 2 points.
Lose on penalties: 1 point.
Draw: 1 point.
Lose: 0 points.
So the basic measure has the appearance of common sense and allows for the difference between losing in the lottery of the penalty shoot-out. So far, so good.
Match status
A multiplier is then applied to the result according to the importance of the fixture, thus ensuring that competitive matches have more relevance to a team’s ranking than friendlies.
World Cup finals match: 4.0x
Continental Cup (e.g. European Championship, African Cup of Nations): 3.0x
Confederation Cup: 3.0x
World Cup and continental cup qualifiers: 2.5x
Friendly matches: 1.0x
While it undoubtedly makes sense to weight in favour of competitive matches the values selected seem somewhat arbitrary. Can the Confederation Cup really be worth as much as the European Championships? Or is this Fifa attempting to boost the profile of its own rather unexciting tournament?
It also seems rather puzzling that a World Cup match should be worth more than a European Championship match when the opposition could be identical. Was it harder to beat France in the 1998 World Cup finals than it was to beat them in Euro 2000, simply because it was the World Cup? A possible answer could be that the World Cup, as the premier national team competition is likely to feature all the best teams. One of the other criteria introduces a bias based on opposition strength, so the answer cannot lie here. And that is without mentioning some of the lower-ranked teams from Asia, North and Central America or Africa that make up the World Cup line-up.
It does go some way to explaining the inflated rankings for the US and Mexico prior to the World Cup, though a regional measure attempts to address this.
Opposition strength
Winning matches against teams with a higher ranking is more significant than against minnows.
The somewhat confusing calculation for this is: Opposition strength multiplier = [200 - ranking position]/100.
This means that a team ranked fourth (England) have an opposition strength multiplier of [200-4]/100 = 1.96.
Scotland have a multiplier of [200-34]/100 = 1.66, while a team ranked 149th have a multiplier of 0.51. Any team below 150 automatically has a multiplier of 0.5.
This seems fair, in principle, but shares an inherent weakness with other rankings systems that take opposition strength into account.
Basing a measure on another one already in the system can lead to an exacerbation of any errors and damages the integrity of the rankings.
Regional strength
Fifa acknowledge that European and South American competition is stronger than elsewhere by applying multipliers to matches against teams from different regions.
Uefa (Europe): 1.0x
Conmebol (S America): 0.98x
Caf (Africa): 0.85x
Concacaf (N&C America): 0.85x
OFC (Oceania): 0.85x
AFC (Asia): 0.85x
This means that continental cup matches are weighted down in weaker regions, which seems appropriate, but also works against strong teams in weak regions, such as Australia. It also has the appearance of sharing an arbitrary and unshifting quality with the match status, placing Asia at the same level as Oceania, for example.
Ratings period
Fifa sensibly weight results in favour of the more recent.
Within the last 12 months: 1.0x
12-24 months: 0.5x
24-36 months: 0.3x
36-48 months: 0.2x
This means that matches in the past year are five times more relevant to matches three to four years ago, giving a reasonably, if again arbitrary, up-to-date nature to the rankings.
When all these are applied the figure is multiplied by 100 and rounded off to give the points total.
All very scientific, all very complicated, but is it reflective of team strength? Are England better than Italy? Or Germany? Or Portugal?
The only way to tell is to pit teams against each other as a way of determining who is best, perhaps in some kind of tournament. If there are too many teams to make that feasible, a qualifying stage could be introduced to eliminate the weaker sides, perhaps based regionally for logistical reasons, with a finals tournament once every so often, perhaps every four years.
And if all of the national teams in the world can enter, why don’t we call it the World Cup?