Wales better than Chile? FIFA's crackpot ranking system explained

Updated 07/08/2015 at 12:43 GMT

The world of football spluttered into its collective morning cup of tea on Thursday when South America's newly-crowned champions were deemed worse than Wales.

Alexis Sanchez of Chile lifts their latest trophy, while Gareth Bale holds aloft every trophy ever won by Wales

Image credit: Reuters

Chile beat Argentina in the Copa America final last month, a superb, hard-fought victory that came just 12 months after a string of impressive displays at the World Cup in Brazil.

Yet Jorge Sampaoli's side are ranked just 10th in the world on FIFA's latest list, one place lower than Wales.

It's not the first time that this has happened. When the draw was made for the 2014 World Cup, Italy lost out on a spot among the seven seeded teams after the rankings put them just below Switzerland. That happened despite the Italians having qualified for the World Cup with two games to spare, and having been finalists at Euro 2012 just 15 months beforehand, a tournament for which the Swiss did not even qualify.

Euro 2016

Rooney: Hodgson got it wrong at finals

01/08/2016 at 20:07

Now, it's Wales who are listed ahead of a footballing superpower - despite, famously, having not qualified for a major football tournament since the 1958 World Cup.

Crazy, but true. And here's how it's happened.

Chile fans roar on their team in the Copa America final against Argentina

Image credit: Reuters

HOW THE RANKINGS WORK

The formula is relatively simple, in theory: each team is awarded three points for a win and one point for a draw in time-honoured fashion. There's also two points for a win on penalties, and one for a defeat on penalties.

Those points are then multiplied according to these formulas:

- Importance of the match (World Cup games 4.0, Continental/Confederations Cup such as the Euros 3.0, Qualifiers 2.5, Friendlies 1.0)

- Strength of the opposing team (200 minus the team's ranking at the time of the game, so Argentina's multiplier is 199, while 100th ranked Georgia's is 100). There's a minimum 50 in this category, making a win against 150th-placed Hong Kong as meaningful as a win against joint-208th-ranked Anguilla and Bahamas.

- Strength of the Confederation (Europe or South America 1.00, North/Central America 0.88, Asia or Africa 0.86, Oceania 0.85)

In other words, if England beat top-ranked Argentina in a World Cup match, they'd get three for the win, multiplied by four for the match importance, multiplied by 199 for the opposition, multiplied by one for the Confederation). That's 3x4x199x1=2,388. England's game against Slovenia in June, by contrast, landed them 1140 points (3x2.5x152x1), while their draw against Ireland was worth just 140 (1x1x140x1).

Gareth Bale's, left, main focus next season will be on leading Wales to Euro 2016

Image credit: PA Sport

WEIGHTING THE LAST FOUR YEARS

Once you know how many points each match is worth, it's time to figure out how to turn those points into rankings.

All your points per match are averaged out for each calendar year, and average results from the past four years are tallied up, with results longer ago counting less. Your score is then your average points over the past 12 months, plus 50% of your average points from the previous year, plus 30% of your average from 25-36 months ago, plus 20% of your average points from the 12 months before that.

Thus England have 1157: that's their average of 705.38 points a year in 2014-15, plus 205.69 from 2013-14 (when they averaged 411.37), plus 105.27 from 2012-13 (when they averaged 350.91) plus 140.5 from 2011-12 (when they averaged 702.5).

A little complicated, sure, but it seems fair enough. Until you start digging deeper, and you see that Brazil, ranked fifth, have a ranking of 1,186, while Chile down in 10th have 1124 - a difference of just five per cent.

If you think that seems like a tiny margin dividing the teams, you'd be right. And that brings up all sorts of anomalies. Particularly if, as you may have noticed in that England v Ireland example above, getting a draw in a friendly absolutely hammers your averages.

Chile's Arturo Vidal leaves the pitch with his teammates at halftime during their Copa America 2015 final

Image credit: Reuters

FRIENDLY DISASTERS

The Welsh FA has not set up a single friendly match in the last 12 months. Not one. And while it's a questionable way of preparing a team, it's a great way of stacking your rankings. Even their scraped 2-1 win against Andorra last September was worth 375 points (3x2.5x50x1). Let's put that in perspective: if they'd had the week off and instead gone to Buenos Aires, where they'd earned a thrilling 3-3 draw against Argentina, they'd have claimed 198 points.

On top of that, some of Wales's famous victories have been huge for them. A 3-0 win away in Israel in March was great, and a 1-0 win over Belgium in June even better. Those matches each carried huge points tallies, since they were victories in official qualifiers. In the case of Belgium, for example, it was 1,485 (3x2.5x198x1).

WALES: BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD?

You may have noticed that the friendly anomaly has played right into Wales's hands. It means they have earned a stonking 817.58 point average over the past 12 months. According to FIFA's formula, that makes them the greatest football side on planet earth over the course of the last year.

Wales manager Chris Coleman gives instructions to Gareth Bale in match against Bosnia Herzegovina

Image credit: Imago

SO WHAT ABOUT CHILE THEN?

Like Argentina, Chile have had some big wins too. Going unbeaten through the Copa America was clearly huge, even if draws against Mexico (3-3 in the group stage) and Argentina (0-0 in the final) netted them just 531 and 594 points respectively.

So holding off rampant Argentina in a chaotic Copa America final was worth a mere 70 per cent of the points Wales earned (847.5) for squeaking past Cyprus 2-1 last October.

And that's just the start of the bad news for Chile: their friendly defeats at the hands of Brazil (understandable), Uruguay (understandable) and Iran (admittedly not great) in the last year or so earned them 0 points, but increased their number of matches by which their points tally was divided, so actually knocks their average down significantly.

Chile's Eduardo Vargas celebrates his second goal against Peru during their Copa America 2015 semi-final match

Image credit: Reuters

THE ANSWER?

The easiest way, by far, for teams to be ranked would be by a panel of humans. Anyone with even a vague knowledge of international football can say instinctively that a team who have won the world's joint-second toughest tournament is better than one which hasn't even qualified for a tournament in nearly 60 years. It seems equally odd that Germany are ranked third just 13 months after proving themselves the best team in the world - especially when Belgium, who went out of that tournament in the quarter-finals, are above them.

But where do you draw the line? Should wobbling titans like Spain (11th) and Italy (16th) be promoted above the likes of a superb, but less historically-successful side such as Colombia? That's why boiling games down into rankings points is a good idea.

Colombia's Jeison Murillo celebrates a goal with teammates during the Copa America 2015

Image credit: Reuters

There will always be problems with this. What do you do about defeats, for example? At the moment losing 3-2 to Spain in extra time at a World Cup match is worth 0 points, while needing a late penalty to beat Turks and Caicos Islands in a friendly is worth 132 points.

But the biggest flaws in the current system are self-evidently to do with the points available in friendlies, how they affect a side's average, and the weightings relating to the strength of your opponent. Until FIFA sort it out, the rankings will continually be ridiculed every time such anomalies crop up.

Euro 2016

Hodgson's England 'had the talent to win Euro 2016'

30/07/2016 at 10:59

Euro 2016

France beat Portugal to make final

00:02:18

21/07/2016 at 22:43

Euro 2016

Sam Allardyce ‘to be named England manager’ – report

20/07/2016 at 17:47

Join 3M+ users on app

Stay up to date with the latest news, results and live sports

Download

Scan me