Jun 22

Lies damn lies and FIFA World Cup rankings   Posted by sharps, tagged with cup fifa soccer world

The FIFA rankings seem to be causing the usual confusion (especially among my US friends). Mexico & USA are placed unusually high (4th & 5th) because the rankings are based (to a large degree) on the results of local confederations (for Europe - the EUFA European Championships & for the US & Mexico the CONCAF Gold Cup). Basically the CONCAF Gold Cup covers North & Central America and the Caribbean and not suprisingly, the two big countries (USA & Mexico) have always dominated. So USA & Mexico always get a good ranking. Compared to Germany (19th), Sweden (16th) who have to battle through the European Championships.

I'm ignoring a lot of detail but that's pretty much the reason for the ranking disparity. Here's a longer explanation.


Technorati Tags: fifa world cup rankings

Jun 15

Phew : World Cup Spoiler Alert   Posted by sharps, tagged with cup england soccer world

Well, England have somehow managed to scrape through to the next round of the 2006 World Cup with a pretty unconvincing 2:0 win against Trinidad & Tobago. Looking at the situation another way - we managed to get through without playing as a team - if we actually find our form; how knows what we can do. Rooney got 30 minute run-around - which is good - I think Sven is being smart holding Rooney back until he's really needed. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the rest of Group B - that will be mostly decide today when Sweden meet Paraguay.