The only way is up

England may have limped in to the last eight of the World Cup before performing their customary bailing-out act but our lacklustre lads have soared five places in the latest FIFA world rankings.

Has Steve McClaren added some value already?

Not quite. The great leap forward results from a radical and long overdue restructuring on FIFA’s part, with greater importance attached to World Cup games rather than friendlies and the window reduced from eight to four years.

Biggest losers in the revamp are the CONCACAF nations, who traditionally spend most of their time playing among themselves. It will be some time before the USA (16) get back in to the top ten, let alone the unfeasible fourth place they attained in April.

One of the biggest winners under the new system is Canada, who have rocketed up 29 places to rank 54th. That’s quite an achievement for a nation whose solitary finals appearance came twenty years ago and who last played at the end of March. This puts Canada two places ahead of 2002 semi-finalists South Korea.

At least England’s stock rose as a consequence of playing some competitive games. Just as well we didn’t meet anyone more competitive than Paraguay (currently 19th), Trinidad and Tobago (64), Sweden (22) and Ecuador (28).

Other rollercoaster teams are Japan, who plunge to 49th and Ukraine, who zoom 30 places to 15th. Switzerland might not have scored a goal at Germany 2006 but did enough to lift themselves 22 places to 13th.

Flawed though the old model may have been the revised version has already thrown up many such anomalies. FIFA arrived at the new-look rankings “after extensive tests and assessments of more than 20 formulas (surely formulae?) and over 700 variations.” The old rankings were felt to be difficult to understand and too complicated. Many observers will experience difficulty in comprehending any measurement of footballing excellence that gives such an exalted rating to such a mediocre English side.

By John Kirk