World League of Nations, 01 July 2008 edition

Establishing who’s the best national team in the world at any one time can be tricky. The World Cup comes around only every four years and a team very rarely (if at all) can claim to be the best for so long, plus it is an imperfect system. The FIFA rankings are imperfect too.

So, every now and then I compile, just for my own curiosity, a list of results for a World League. The rules are quite simple: you take the last two matches played between the participating teams and add the points as if they were a typical league system: three points for a win, one for a draw.

I seldom have the time to take this very far, but I always start with the ‘Big Eight’ of world football: Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain. I suppose these 8 can be disputed, but looking at history, present, national leagues club competitions, and the general notion that they ARE the big teams of the day, I think this is most times quite clear-cut. I find that the 9th team changes more often (Portugal, Czech Republic, maybe a third American, maybe an African team...), but these eight tend to stay as ‘seeds’ if you will. This year I have added Portugal to the mix, and they have as good a record as Brazil.

So, for what it’s worth, here is the updated data, right after the last big game, Germany v Spain. These are the last two matches played between each of these nations.

Arg 0-0 Bra 2008 06 18 WCQ (World Cup Qualifying)
Arg 0-3 Bra 2007 07 15 RTF (Regional Tournament Finals)

Arg 2-3 Eng 2005 11 12 Fri (Friendly)
Arg 0-1 Eng 2002 06 07 WCF (World Cup Finals)

Arg 1-0 Fra 2007 02 07 Fri
Arg 0-2 Fra 1986 03 26 Fri

Arg 1-1 Ger 2006 06 30 WCF
Arg 2-2 Ger 2005 06 21 FCC (FIFA Confederations’ Cup)

Arg 2-1 Ita 2001 02 28 Fri
Arg 1-1 Ita 1990 07 03 WCF

Arg 0-0 Net 2006 06 21 WCF
Arg 0-1 Net 2003 02 12 Fri

Arg 1-3 Por 1972 06 29 Fri
Arg 2-0 Por 1964 05 31 Fri

Arg 1-2 Spa 2006 10 11 Fri
Arg 2-0 Spa 1999 11 17 Fri

Bra 1-1 Eng 2007 06 01 Fri
Bra 2-1 Eng 2002 06 21 WCF

Bra 0-1 Fra 2006 07 01 WCF
Bra 0-0 Fra 2004 05 20 Fri

Bra 3-2 Ger 2005 06 25 FCC
Bra 1-1 Ger 2004 09 08 Fri

Bra 3-3 Ita 1997 06 08 Fri
Bra 0-0 Ita 1994 07 17 WCF

Bra 2-2 Net 1999 10 09 Fri
Bra 3-1 Net 1999 06 08 Fri

Bra 0-2 Por 2007 02 06 Fri
Bra 1-2 Por 2003 03 29 Fri

Bra 0-0 Spa 1999 11 13 Fri
Bra 0-3 Spa 1992 09 12 Fri

Eng 0-1 Fra 2008 03 26 Fri
Eng 1-2 Fra 2004 06 13 RTF

Eng 1-2 Ger 2007 08 22 Fri
Eng 5-1 Ger 2001 09 01 RTQ (Regional Tournament Qualifying)

Eng 1-2 Ita 2002 03 27 Fri
Eng 0-1 Ita 2000 11 15 Fri

Eng 0-0 Por 2006 07 01 WCF
Eng 2-2 Por 2004 06 24 RTF

Eng 1-1 Net 2006 11 15 Fri
Eng 0-0 Net 2005 02 09 Fri

Eng 0-1 Spa 2007 02 07 Fri
Eng 0-1 Spa 2004 11 17 Fri

Fra 0-0 Ger 2005 11 12 Fri
Fra 3-0 Ger 2003 11 15 Fri

Fra 0-2 Ita 2008 06 13 RTF
Fra 0-0 Ita 2007 09 08 RTQ

Fra 1-4 Net 2008 06 13 RTF
Fra 0-0 Net 2004 03 31 Fri

Fra 1-0 Por 2006 07 05 WCF
Fra 4-0 Por 2001 04 25 Fri

Fra 0-1 Spa 2008 02 06 Fri
Fra 3-1 Spa 2006 06 27 WCF

Ger 0-2 Ita 2006 07 04 WCF
Ger 1-4 Ita 2006 03 01 Fri

Ger 3-2 Por 2008 06 19 RTF
Ger 3-1 Por 2006 07 08 WCF

Ger 2-2 Net 2005 08 17 Fri
Ger 1-1 Net 2004 06 15 RTF

Ger 0-1 Spa 2008 06 29 RTF
Ger 1-3 Spa 2003 02 12 Fri

Ita 3-1 Net 2005 11 12 Fri
Ita 0-0 Net 2000 06 29 RTF

Ita 3-1 Por 2008 02 06 Fri
Ita 2-1 Por 2004 03 31 Fri

Ita 0-0 Spa 2008 06 23 RTF
Ita 0-1 Spa 2008 03 26 Fri

Net 0-1 Por 2006 06 25 WCF
Net 1-2 Por 2004 06 30 RTF

Net 1-0 Spa 2002 03 27 Fri
Net 2-1 Spa 2000 11 15 Fri

Por 1-0 Spa 2004 06 20 RTF
Por 0-3 Spa 2003 04 06 Fri

And this is the league table it produces:

1 Ita 30 (W8-D6-L2)
1 Fra 30 (9-3-4)
3 Spa 29 (9-2-5)
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
4 Bra 20 (4-8-4)
4 Por 20 (6-2-8)
19
18
6 Net 17 (3-8-5)
6 Arg 17 (4-5-7)
16
8 Ger 15 (3-6-7)
9 Eng 14 (3-5-8)

Spain, who hadn’t beaten one of the other big 8 in a competitive match since 1984 (Germany in a European Champiosnship finals too), do quite well in this table due to a very good record in friendlies. They’ve got current victories over every other team in this league except the Netherlands, compensated by current doubles over England and Germany.

France and Italy, the World Cup finalists, are top in spite of their bad showing at Euro 2008. From it Italy left with a win, a draw and a defeat, against France, Spain and the Netherlands, respectively. Not too bad. The Italians are notoriously hard to beat: they have got only two current defeats.

Germany have the worst defeat, 5-1 against you know who. England are bottom after last year’s defeat against the Germans. And Argentina, FIFA’s number 1, are joint 6th with almost half the points only of the leaders.

This year I have added Portugal, who more than hold their own, leaving four teams behind and tying with Brazil, who are weighed down by friendlies.

The table relies a lot on friendly results. You could discard those and count only official matches, but then you’d end up with very old matches, and for example Brazil and Germany have played only one official match ever (FCC aside): the 2002 World Cup Final. And even counting friendlies, you have to go all the way back to 1964 for the second-previous match between Portugal and Argentina. If friendlies is what we get, then we’d have to count them, and besides, we all think that ‘friendly’ doesn’t mean that the match shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Now, how useful would this be if we put every team in the world in? Maybe not terribly useful, but it’s a straightforward and easy-to-follow rule. Whenever a match is played, you discard the oldest result of the two between those teams and substitute it with the new match. The problem is the very high number of ties that have never been played (who’s played the Solomon Islands, for example?). Everyone plays the other teams in their confederation all the time (so I think this system would be quite useful for that), but inter-confederation matches are much more rare, in particular for lesser teams.

Anyway, if you’d like to enlarge this thing adding other teams, a useful site for results id FIFA’s own, which has the additional force of being ‘official’.

http://fifa.com/worldfootball/statisticsandrecords/index.html

Thoughts?

Cheers

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