World Cup Countdown - American high five

I have had a bit of ribbing about the latest FIFA world rankings. As I tried to explain Charlton is the name of my team not England, but these 'soccer' fans need humoring (sic).

Recently FIFA announced their latest world rankings which puts Brazil at number 1 and American Samoa at 205th, with everyone else in between.

The USA are now at an all-time high of 5th, 4 places higher than England at 9th and the main reason for this is the convuluted points system that FIFA and their American sponsors Coca-Cola operate. There are various strength factors relating to competition, region and being home or away but what is lost on my American friends is that in the CONCACAF region that the US plays in, the opposition are far weaker than the European nations that England come up against. There are also far more World Cup qualifying games in the CONCACAF region than there are in the UEFA region, and although there is a points weighting in UEFA's favour it is negligible.

Simply put playing games against Italy (12), France (8) and Holland (3) is a lot harder than playing against St Kitts & Nevis (131) and Venezuela (70). Even the once considered easier European games against the likes of Norway (39), Cyprus (98) and Latvia (68) are no longer pushovers. The US national team actually play Latvia in a World Cup warm up game soon.

This reasoning would also explain why Mexico appear at number 7 in the rankings and Honduras are at 43, higher than World Cup qualifiers Australia (44), Togo (58), Angola (60) and Serbia & Montenegro (46).

Also England these days play a preposterous amount of friendlies that are worth squat in the rankings, perhaps a reason why the six-times finalists Germany, who have played two years of them, are ranked at 22.

Click here for the full rankings but below is the top 20 countries with their associated points.

1. Brazil 835
2. Czech Republic 789
3. Netherlands 788
4. Argentina 765
5. United States 764
6. Spain 763
7. Mexico 762
8. France 760
9. England 756
10. Portugal 755
11. Turkey 743
12= Nigeria 738
12= Italy 738
14. Denmark 736
15. Cameroon 726
16. Sweden 725
17. Egypt 714
18. Japan 712
19= Iran 705
19= Croatia 705