Friday, March 18, 2011

FALW Women's World Ranking

FIFA's latest ranking of women's national teams has just been released. As I can't figure out how the hell FIFA ranks the US Women's National Team #1 and places Nigeria below, say, Scotland, I figured I should post my own purely intuitive ranking.

My top 15:
     1       Germany    Germany

     2       Canada    Canada

     3       Brazil    Brazil

     4       USA    USA

     5       Nigeria    Nigeria

     6       Japan    Japan

     7       Korea Republic    South Korea

     8       England    England

     9       Sweden    Sweden

     10     Mexico    Mexico

     11     Australia    Australia

     12     France    France

     13     Colombia    Colombia

     14     Norway    Norway

     15     Korea DPR   North Korea
Mind you, this is pure polemics. But I do actually think Canada looks stronger than the US. Mexico surely looks stronger than Iceland. To my fellow bloggers: I await your rankings - they will surely be more informative than the crap statistics that FIFA puts out.

3 comments:

  1. FredMarch 18, 2011 at 4:33 PM

    I don't see why Nigeria should be as high as 5th. They're the best team of a bad conference and they don't have quality wins against great teams. There are far from being a top 5 team in the World. What victory outside of Africa do they have?
    1) Germany
    2) Brazil
    3) USA
    4) Canada
    5) Japan
    6) North Korea
    7) Sweden
    8) England
    9) France
    10) Mexico

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jennifer DoyleMarch 18, 2011 at 6:26 PM

    Great! My ranking was meant to provoke - I think it's important to get other versions of this list out there.

    re Why I like Nigeria: U-20 World Cup last summer, they went all the way to the finals. Lost 2-0 to Germany, like everyone else does. Played very smart, tactical football throughout the tournament. In last Olympics they were in the group of death, with Germany, Brazil, and S. Korea if I remember right. They had really interesting games against both Germany and Brazil. they do need better exposure, but in many ways so does Brazil!

    ReplyDelete
  3. UmmonApril 3, 2011 at 9:11 AM

    I agree pretty much with Fred's ranking. However, I must also add that the FIFA Women's rankings are based on the ELO rating system which makes them much better indicators than the Men's rankings. The main reason that our rankings would differ from it are because it uses changes teams' rankings only a little for each (non world cup) game they play, so it is more of a long term ranking.

    ReplyDelete

Feedback? Let me know what you think. Just an FYI: all comments posted to this blog are recorded, whether I publish them or not. I do not publish generally hateful comments - whether they be directed at me or at players and teams or other readers. I appreciate reader feedback, especially from those whose contributions add nuance and complexity to the story.