New FIFA rankings just out.

We're one place (16) behind Engerlund (15), results go our way over the next few days and we could over take them.

As funny as it is. Seedings and rankings are a load of pish. They should do away with them and like in domestic cup draws, everyone drawn out the same hat. If France, Italy, England, Spain, Sweden, Germany and Holland in the same group then tough luck. Same if we were to get Malta, Cyprus, Wales, Andorra etc...

If we go above England they will be abolished.

I hope you're not under the illusion we'd have a better chance of qualifying out of a group with Andorra, Malta, San Marino etc. You should know by now that's not the way it works with Scotland.

I likes the sound of that

I think thats seedings are vital in a qualifying tournament, by all means do away with them in the Euros or world cup. But a team of San Marino, Andorra, Azerbaijan, Malta and Iceland competing for 1.5 WC place? . That would mean one of those teams would have to qualfy for the WC. The thing is to keep the quality in the tournament HIGH thats why we have seedings in the qualifying rounds otherwise we potentially have complete joke teams competing in the final tournamet bringing a poor quality of football and less global interest. I do agree in the final tournaments do away with seedings, every team earned the right to be in that tournament let them compete on a level pegging.

the whole idea of seedings is to make it as unlikely as possible that so called "big" nations will fail to qualify because theyre more interested in telly revenues at the tournaments than anything else.because the big teams are seeded highly it is more and more likely they will qualify from groups thus meaning they will remain being seeded highly in the future,its self perpetuating;im just surprised with the way things are now that UEFA and FIFA dont just automatically qualify certain teams but im sure that will come.

tbh, I don't really read too much into the FIFA Rankings....


...but if we do end up above England in the next few weeks...


...GET IT RIGHT UP YE!!!!



A lot can be said about team spirit over individuals performing within a 'team' lol

That really is a ridiculous shout. Can you imagine sitting down to world cup game of brazil against andorra? andorra qualified as they qualified from a group consisting of liechenstien, luxembourg, england, cyprus, malta and azerbaijen. Its the same with rankings in anything. Common sense i would say.

Much as the FIFA rankings are flawed ( at no point are we really 16th best team in the world tbf ) they are still a hell of a lot more accurate than the random number generator which UEFA uses. God knows what pot we would have been in with that system. Thankfully FIFA insisted on their being used for wc qualifiers but no doubt for the next Euro campaign we can look forward to the next wc finalists again.
As an aside, it is ironic that the daft idea of a GB olympic team would include so few scots when England are ranked only 1 place above us.

Do you mean the UEFA system which averages points per game won over the previous 2 campaigns.

I think that's a fairly reasonable method of determining seedings.

I dont see how the seeding for the last Euro quaifiers or indeed the finals could be seen as an accurate representation of where teams were at.

How would you do it? The floor is yours.

Well I would be biased and give us a straight bye into the tourney

I would, as I indictated earlier, use the FIFA rankings to govern seedings. No system will be perfect but for me it is defo the lesser of two evils.

don't worry they'll bounce back and 2010 will definetly be their year

Should we all wave on the way past?

With the much smaller amount of groups, seedings were done where you ended up with Italy (i think?) in pot 2. (some bigger teams had to be in pot 2). At the time, Ukraine were alright but nothing special. We were dross and in pot 4. The draw was made before the WC finals, so having France, Italy in the final and Ukraine in the 1/4 finals was irrelevant to the draw.

A system with no seeding should be used IMO. Who cares if Spain, Italy, Germany and Portugal all end up in one group? luck of the draw and all that.

If that happens though all you would hear was people moaning like little bitches that smaller more obscure countries are there in place of the bigger more famous countries.

Not really.

England have by far greater individual players.

I was being a bit tongue in cheek, but the the best way to build a team is not to just pick the best individuals. the British Lions rugby team that won the test series in SA in 97 was very controversial because Telfer and McGeechan did not pick the 'best' players for each position. They put together a team which worked well as a unit and left out a lot of high profile players which resulted in the Lions winning the series.
England are only 1 place above us in the rankings because the likes of Terry and Lampard are not that great in the international arena in comparison to the paychecks and the slaverings of Jamie Rednapp.. If I was England mgr I would rather have someone like Bullard who will not use the England set up to further his own ego and 'celeb' profile unlike some others. What you lose in raw talent you make up for with other attributes.
That said, given the structure of of English football and the size of population they should be ashamed at only being one place above us in the rankings.

I feel for them, I really do.

The current system does nothing to encourage competition. Instead it favours the big guns, given that they are set a group of diddy nations to brush aside, in order to qualify, a mere inconvenience to them.

I'm sure Sepp Blatter was moaning there aren't enough shocks in International football not that long ago - I wonder why?

In your opinion. The English press does it's best to create that impression but like dogma said its a team game.