FoG

So with the recent news which announced that Qatar 2022 will be the first Winter World Cup it has gotten some of us wondering how that could work to the advantage of some Nations.  Players' fitness can vary throughout the season starting from unfit, progressing to match fit, on to peak fitness and by the end of the season tired.  Different leagues have different season - in December in England, the premier league will be in full swing in December, but in United States the MLS will be on their off season. There is very little data for most teams, for example the last time that Ireland played an International match in December was back in 1948 which was a Friendly in Dublin that they lost to Switzerland.  This is hardly an indication though that Ireland will do poorly in a December World Cup in 2022. So to make the analysis relevant the below table only includes recent internationals (since 2000).  The table includes Nov and Jan as well as Dec because of the shorta...

Here on FoG blog we have been watching the FIFA rankings.  They are rather meaningless for most years but they are used when it comes to seeding for the World Cup, and also the World Cup Qualifying.  We saw in 2014 World Cup how Italy suffered from dropping out of the top 8 seeds, and Switzerland benefited. The July release is now likely to decide the seeds for the European qualifying draw for World Cup 2018.  Up until now we have not had the exact release date.  However from checking the FIFA.com website today I can see the date will be July 9th.  The release date determines the cut off points for the FIFA ranking points. This is critical for teams like Netherlands and Germany and it means that their World Cup games versus Brazil and Argentina and all matches played on or after  9th July 2014 will have full weighting.  Netherlands beat Brazil in the third place play-off on 12 July 2014 which contributes 2364 points (3 * 4 * 197 * 1) to thei...

FIFA need to stick to football and stay away from maths. The latest blunder relates to the points awarded to Netherlands and Brazil.  See the screenshot from their website this afternoon below. 3 * 2.5 * 101 * 0.99 = 749.925.  Now I have no problem with FIFA rounding this down .  But... 3 * 1 * 171 * 0.995 = 510.435.  And normally I would have no problem with FIFA rounding this up . But is there one rule for Brazil and another for Netherlands? Round up or Round down? I wouldn't even mention this because 1 single point averaged out over a couple dozen games makes a negligible difference.  However it seems to highlight the fact that FIFA don't pay much attention to the detail.   This comes in recent months where I also noticed a slight misrepresentation of the calculations #fifa #fifarankings well done FIFA. Back to primary school and brush up on your Maths. 1 * 1 * 88 * 1 is not 81! pic.twitter.com/XyVcCbGspz — FoG (@FoG_BLoG) Ju...

Ireland's qualification for WC2018 has already begun in my eyes.  It is likely that the qualifying groups will be seeded according to July 2015 Fifa Rankings ( see here ).  Every match between now and then will count rankings points towards these seedings.  Ireland are likely to be in one of the Pots 3 to 5 based on current rankings.  This would mean that as well as a top seed like Germany, Spain and Belgium that Ireland will also have to contend with a Pot 2 team like England (current rankings place them only 12th in Europe), Netherlands (who are on a drastic slide) and France (who will find it hard to maintain a high place in the FIFA rankings while only playing friendlies from here to 2016). Much better for Ireland would be to be in Pot 2 themselves and avoid these big names.  There are no teams provisionally in Pots 3-5 that will be a worry. The teams ranked 1st to 9th within Europe will likely make up Pot 1, with teams placed 10th to 18th in Pot 2, dep...

Despite being at the wrong end of some of the biggest upsets in this round of international qualifiers Germany and Netherlands are still tipped (by the bookies) to top their respective qualifying groups with ease and so should comfortably qualify for Euro 2016. Moldova's draw with Russia was 9/1, you could have had 8/1 for Slovakia to beat Spain.  Ireland, Poland, N. Ireland, Iceland and Liechtenstein pulled off the greatest upsets in this round of Euro Qualifiers. For Ireland the draw against Germany was incredible but its only 1 point.  The games against Scotland and Poland will be so much more important as a win or lose in these games could cause a 6 point swing for or against. So far England, Belgium and Italy are showing the most consistency of the group favourites.  Indeed England are the qualification experts - they haven't lost a qualifying match for the World Cup or Euro since 10 Oct 2009. Although Spain and Netherlands will probably safely qualify ...

There have been 20 World Cups over all time, competed among 80 different nations but only 8 different winners.  In those times there have been some teams that have come close but not close enough. Hungary  made the final match twice, first time in 1938 and then in 1954 arguably one of the greatest teams in the world.  They had gone unbeaten in all matches from May 1950 to July 1954 - winning 22 out of 25 games and scoring 118 goals.  They even beat Germany by 8-3 in the group stage before going on and losing in the Final to the same German team. Czechoslovakia and Sweden  also made the final but never won, Czechoslovakia, like Hungary got there twice.   But the best team at being great but not the best is Netherlands .  In terms of win percentage they have a better record than former champions Spain, France, England and Uruguay.  They have also made more finals than each of those teams.  They are runners up three  times, this...