Doesn’t it seem like every time FIFA updates their official rankings, someone somewhere is outraged? It is pretty much tradition at this point, the moment the list comes out, sports writers and fans take to the internet to complain about how (insert team) does not deserve to be ranked above (insert other team). How could Romania crack the top 10, while the Copa America winners Chile are in 11th place? Some writers have called the rankings insane because in their opinion, some teams like Wales are ranked too high. But if you actually look at what FIFA rankings are designed to rank and what the rankings are used for, you will see that FIFA rankings are working perfectly fine, great even.



First of all, what are FIFA rankings? FIFA ranks every national team recognized by FIFA according to a points system. The points are calculated based on recent record dating back up to 4 years, and it combines result, opponent strength, match status and regional strength.

Points are accumulated whenever two national teams play in a Fifa sanctioned “International ‘A’ Match”. An “A” match is a match where both sides play their senior representative team (or “A” team). By FIFA’s definition, an “A” team simply means a country’s senior-most national team. Official B and C teams like England B and England C don’t count, and youth teams don’t count. However, by FIFA’s definition, an “A” team doesn’t have to involve the country’s best players, reduced strength squads also count as “A” teams.

Points are only given to teams that win or draw their matches. 3 points are given for every win, 2 points are given to teams that drew in regulation time and advanced by penalties, and 1 point is given for draws or losses due to penalty shootouts. No points are given to a team that loses in regulation time.

The points given for the result and then further multiplied by certain multipliers. The first multiplier is the match status, friendlies have a multiplier of 1, World Cup and Continental cup qualifiers have a multipliers of 2.5, Continental cup and Conferdation Cup finals have a multiplier of 3, and World Cup finals have a multiplier of 4.

The second multiplier is for regional strength to compensate for the “difficulty” of the different confederations. The regional strength multiplier of a match is the average of the regional strength of the two teams’ regions. UEFA has a multiplier of 0.99, and CONMEBOL’s multiplier is 1.0. CONCACAF, AFC, CAF, and OFC all have regional multipliers of 0.85.

Finally, the last multiplayer is oppositional strength. The opposition strength multiplier is 200 subtracted by the opponent’s ranking position and divided by 100. So for instance, if the opponent is the 50th rated national team, the opposition strength multiplier would be 1.5. There are two exceptions, the number 1 rated team always has a multiplier of 2, and lowest possible opposition strength multiplier is 0.5.

To calculate the final amount of points that a national team receives for a match, take the result, multiply it by the opposition strength, match importance, regional strength and finally by 100. This is the formula:

To calculate the FIFA rankings, total the number of points a team has accumulated in the last 4 years, with earlier results being worth less. Multiply results from within 12 months by a multiplier of 1, results from 12-14 months ago by 0.5, results from 24-36 months ago by 0.3, and results from 36-48 months ago by 0.2. FIFA simply ranks all the national teams by the number of points they have to produce the FIFA rankings.

Effectively, FIFA rankings are simply a weighted record. A weighted record is a pretty good indicator of a team’s strength, but fundamentally they are simply a record of how well the team performed recently. FIFA rankings are like a boxer’s record. You can argue that a 9-1 boxer is better than the 10-0 boxer, but you cannot deny that the 10-0 boxer has a better record. FIFA rankings are a better indicator of quality than a records are in boxing. After all, opponent quality does not factor into a boxer record, a win against a world champion and a win against a tomato can are exactly the same on a boxer’s record. Weighted records like FIFA records are a better indicator of quality, but fundamentally they are exactly the same as a record in boxing. FIFA rankings are a ranking not of how good a team is perceived to be, but they are a ranking of how a team has played.

Officially, FIFA rankings only have one actual use, to seed tournaments draws. Tournament seeding when each team has a different schedule is a very difficult task, and usually, the choice is between seeding due to perceived strength, like the NCAA College (gridiron) Football Playoffs, or they could be seeded based purely on record like the NBA or SuperRugby playoffs. I actually think that when it comes to tournament seeding, FIFA rankings are probably the best way to do it. Why? Consider this.

The goal for every tournament is to seed the groups so that there are strong teams and weak teams. This incentivizes teams to play well outside of the tournaments so they can be seeded against (supposedly) easier teams. Since the strength of schedule between different national teams vary greatly, seeding based on pure record simply incentivizes strong teams to schedule very weak opponents and rewards teams based in weak confederations.

Seeding by FIFA rankings are in my opinion the best way to seed tournaments because FIFA rankings are objective and results based. No subjective opinion goes into creating the rankings, and historical reputation doesn’t really factor into the rankings since only the last four years are taken into account. Teams are rewarded by winning, but their results are also weighted by importance and opposition quality. Unlike in boxing, by weighing opposition quality, a team cannot inflate their rankings by scheduling easy opponent.

In comparison, if a tournament is seeded on pure record like the NBA playoffs, there is always the argument that since not every team plays the same schedule, some teams are seeded better simply because they have an easier schedule. If a tournament is seeded by subjective opinion like the NCAA College (American) football playoffs, where it is seeded by polling journalists, you can argue that subjective opinions are inaccurate and nonobjective. FIFA rankings strike a decent compromise between the two extremes.



Often FIFA rankings are attacked because of supposedly “illogical” rankings. After all, in the latest rankings, little known Romania is ranked 8th, higher than traditional footballing powerhouses like Spain and Italy. But remember, FIFA rankings are a ranking of a team’s recent record. Objectively speaking, Romania has had better results than say, Italy in the last year. To use the boxing metaphor again, Romania (or any other “upstart” team like Wales or Belgium) is like a boxer with an 8-2 record in the last 4 years against decent opposition. Sure, you can argue that this boxer maybe got lucky, or maybe he didn’t “deserve” his wins, but you cannot say that an 8-2 record is not good. Italy in this case would be like a famous boxer who has maybe hit a rough patch in the past four years. Sure we can say that a boxer might have gotten unlucky and suffered a few tough losses, but objectively speaking, a better record is a better record. Since FIFA ranks teams by weighted recent record, we can argue endlessly about whether lower ranked teams like Italy are better than higher ranked teams like Romania, but objectively speaking, higher ranked teams have better records. Teams with better records deserve to get seeded higher in tournaments, so I would argue that FIFA rankings are doing a good job.

FIFA rankings are imperfect. We can argue about minor details like how the weighting is skewed, but fundamentally, FIFA rankings are probably the best way to seed a tournament. To argue that some teams deserve to get ranked higher than others because you don’t think they are better shows a poor understanding of how FIFA rankings and produced and what the system is designed to rank.