Heading into the World Cup, the FIFA world ranking of the ten best national soccer teams?included eight European countries and only two South?American countries.
By my quick calculations as of this writing, leaving out matches between teams?from the same continent (because these games are not useful in judging the relative prowess across continents), the record of European teams in World Cup?games against teams from another continent is only seven wins, eight draws, and six losses.
In stark contrast, the South American teams have a stunning?record of nine wins, two draws, and only one loss. This is in?spite of the fact that these teams were ranked 1st, 7th, 16th,?18th, 31st, and 38th in the world.
Is there something in the water in South America? Is there?European bias in how teams are ranked?
(For our thoughts on penalty kicks, see Dubner’s recent blog post.)
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Did you know that Fifa has been wanting to strip South America from one of its berths? Take it with two aspirins Joseph…
Its been argued for long without much evidence that Europe get’s more chances at the World Cup than the strength of its individual teams warrant. This assertion looks quite true and it is clear that it dominance at the world governance institution FIFA is part of the explanation.
your sentiment is correct, but there are only 5 south american teams in the world cup. honduras is in north america. considering they account for the lone loss, your point is actually stronger than you thought.
Don’t forget the rule: Europe wins in Europe; South America wins elsewhere.
Isn’t this similar to most of the pre-season rankings in college football where majority of the top 25 teams are from big conferences because of perceived superiority?
European teams get better rankings because, in the stats, they win more matches (or shows better records) than South american ones. Of course, this is obvious when you play vs Faroe islands, Luxemburg, Albany, Malta, Liechtenstein, etc. Europeans say that almost 50% of south american teams go to world cup, but we play against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, all world champions. But put any SA team play in the european qualifiers, and the percentage may rose up to 100%
There’s a long history of a relationship between team performance and where the cup is played (i.e. in the Northern or Southern hemisphere). Wins are higher for teams when it’s played in their own latitudes. I’ve heard that it’s due to differences in the grasses. Euro’s like short, fast grass. Southern teams like longer, slower grass. I heard they were trying to make the grass shorter in South Africa, but maybe there’s something more to it than the grass.
There are definitely some issues with the FIFA rankings, ESPN’s SPI rankings look to be much more accurate, particularly as group play is wrapping up.