World Cup Centre

The voters have spoken. According to people who voted on the UEFA site, Wesley Sneijder’s goal against France was unquestionably the most beautiful goal of the Euros. It took 40% of the vote. (Nihat Kahveci’s game-winning goal against the Czech Republic took 14%, and Andrei Arshavin’s goal against Sweden took12%. ) And France fan says…Um, yeah. Glad we could help you out, Wesley. (Watch fast. It’s somehow up on YouTube. Not sure how they’ve allowed that to happen, but my guess is it won’t last 24 hours.)

If you ignore the bit where all the television pictures disappeared, Euro 2008 in Swissautria went nice and smooth. UEFA are obviously hoping for the same from Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, but haven’t been sounding entirely confident lately. It’s part of Michel Platini’s plan to spread the wealth to Eastern Europe for the first time, but UEFA apparently called Polkraine to his office in January and told it to “wake up” and put more effort in. The co-hosts were given a few short months to get their grades up. Polkraine needs to get stadiums built, get hotels built and get infrastructure ready for the masses of Euro 2012 fans to descend. Platini visited (read: inpsected) Poland yesterday and is in Ukraine today. Let’s hope he likes what he sees. We already know Sepp Blatter has a mysterious Plan B for World Cup 2010, but Platini insists there’s no such thing in place for Euro 2012: “We will do everything we can to ensure Poland and Ukraine host it and there is no backup plan. Things seemed to go pretty well in Poland, but Platini had a word of warning for the Ukrainians: “Responsibility (for Euro 2012) lies as much on you, as it does on me,” Platini said. “The situation is not as we thought and we will have to work a great deal on it.” Maybe Ukraine’s decision to stage a riot for Michel Platini wasn’t such a good idea? I can see the logic behind it - to display crowd control techniques - but seeing a massive riot in Kiev, no matter how fake, can’t have put Michel Platini in a very positive frame of mind. I wonder what Poland think about all this? Can you imagine how angry they’ll be if Euro 2012 is taken elsewhere and it’s all Ukraine’s fault?

Geez, Spain. I know you’re excited about the your first big win in 44 years, but you could show a little sensitivity here. Or not. This is funnier. (Original find by the Germany blog, via The Spoiler)

When we finished our Euro coverage here at World Cup Blog, several things appeared clear. 1. Andrei Arshavin would get a lot of money to move somewhere 2. Roberto Donadoni would be unceremoniously dumped from Italy, and 3. Raymond Domenech of France would soon follow Number 2 has happened, number 1 is in process, and number 3… Wait a minute. This can’t be right. You’re telling me the French Football Federation voted 18-0 (with one abstention) to keep Domenech in his current job? The Raymond Domenech whose team scored one goal and got a grand total of one point in Euros? Yes, that’s what they’re telling us. The FFF voted today to keep Domenech in his job and give him a chance to take the team to World Cup 2010. As a France fan, I’m shocked. But perhaps not as shocked as I should be. The FFF is a political organization. If you’re a political animal, as Raymond is, and if you have the support of thre President, Jean-Pierre Escalettes, as Raymond does, chances are pretty good that you’ll keep your job. As Raymond has. There have also been rumors that Escalettes is not a fan of Didier Deschamps, who was the top name being tossed about as a replacement. And the fact that a number of current team members, including Willy Sagnol, Patrick Vieira, Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Hatem Ben Arfa spoke out in Domenech’s favor influenced things as well. And UEFA President Michel Platini is apparently also a Domenech fan. And the FFF did make it clear that some things need to change. Domenech was reproached for the brittle way in which he answered questions, for alienating French players from the fans by having too many closed-door training sessions and for proposing marriage to his girlfriend, Estelle Denis, live on television just moments after the French were eliminated. “He only has one mission now, to concentrate on what happens on the field,” Escalettes said. “Now the communication has to be focused on the French team, not personal viewpoints. … In my opinion this communication was sometimes disastrous, aggressive and lacking clarity. He has a few years of experience behind him, and it’s up to him to show he can bounce back from this failure.” So. He has to change. That’s…good. Right? As a France fan, though, I have to say that I’m disappointed by this. Granted, I can’t see into the inner workings of the FFF, but from the outside this appears to be a clearcut case of politics trumping common sense. France needs a fresh, clearheaded approach. They need somebody who can say things like, “We really don’t have anybody who’s effective on set pieces. What can we change to make that happen?” Or, “The only reason we need two defensive midfielders is that our central defenders have gotten old and slow. Put in a younger, faster central defender and maybe we could afford to bring in some more midfield creativity.” Domenech has never offered that clear-headed perspective — that ability to take a step back are recognize when things that used to work are no longer working. And I’m not sure he’s capable of starting now. I was really looking forward to this team getting a fresh start. And I’m sad to see that this fresh start won’t be happening yet.

It happens every month. FIFA’s new rankings come out, and everybody groans and says, “There is no possible way Team X is better than Team Y. Where do they get these rankings, Miss Cleo’s Psychic Hotline?” Good question. And FIFA has the answers, in a handy-dandy five-page .pdf document, which of course reminds us in its logo that these are the Coca-Cola FIFA Men’s World Rankings. Because if they weren’t selling out to advertisers, they wouldn’t be FIFA. The FIFA ranking system was originally conceived as a way to compare the teams in different parts of the world who might not ever play each other. And it does do that. But if you don’t know how it works, it feels pretty opaque. So here are some answers to the questions you would probably ask if you ever decided to care enough about FIFA rankings to come up with questions: How long has FIFA been using this system? The FIFA ranking system started out in 1992 as one big international table: Three points for a win in international competitions, one point for a draw. But it wasn’t long before folks realized that things were just a tiny bit more complicated than that. The system was revised in 1999, and then again in 2006. (A summary of the 2006 changes can be found here.) What time period do the rankings show? It used to be that rankings reflected performance over eight years. The obvious problem with this is that teams can change a lot in eight years. One extremely strong, team-altering player like, say, Zidane, would skew the results too high for years after his retirement. And one extremely bad patch seven or eight years ago would skew the results too low. So the current system looks at a four-year period, and this is weighted — recent games count at 100%, last year’s at 50%, two years ago at 30%, and four years ago at 20%. Where do the points come from? Here’s the calculation FIFA gives us: P = M x I x T x C x 100 And here’s what those things stand for: M = Match — how the match ended. Win (no penalty shootout) 3 Win (penalty shootout) 2 Draw 1 Loss (penalty shootout) 1 Loss (no penalty shootout) 0 I = Importance The more significant the match, the more it counts. The assumption here being that coaches may or may not field the strongest teams in a friendly, but they certainly will in the World Cup. Match status Multiplier Friendly match x 1.0 FIFA World Cup and Continental cup qualifiers x 2.5 Continental cup and Confederations Cup finals x 3.0 World Cup finals match x 4.0 T = Team The strength of the team played. This one is a surprisingly simple weighting system based on relative FIFA ranking. Start with 200. Subtract one point for every place a team lies below first. Then divide by 100. This means that the #1 team is weighted at 2.0, #2 at 1.99, #50 at 1.50, etc. Teams ranked lower than 150th are weighted at .50. C = Confederation. Each confederation is weighted based on how well that confederation did in the three most recent World Cups. Current weights (based on 2006, 2002 and 1998) are: UEFA (Europe) = 1.0 CONMEBOL (South America) = .98 CONCACAF (North and Central America, plus some outliers) = .85 AFC (Asia) = .85 CAF (Africa) = .85 OFC (Oceania) = .85 And that’s it. It’s that simple. The old, pre-2006 system tooked at things like home vs. away and goal differential. The current system assumes that these things are taken care of by taking into account the other factors. If you’d like to see how this works in practice, the FIFA worksheet has several examples using real-world games like the 2006 World Cup final. So there you have it: FIFA rankings, in a nutshell. And feel free to continue to gripe about Spain being #1 and/or Italy being #2. Now you can gripe in a semi-informed way. (And no, I’m not going to use these calculations to show you how Spain has precisely 1557 points. What do I look like, your math teacher?) For FIFA’s Q & A’s about how the 2006 revision affects the rankings, click here. Really, you should click there. Because how else will you ever know what Coca-Cola’s role is in the ranking system? Alternate measurement system: ELO rankings, which is basically the ELO chess system, modified for soccer. But that’s a topic for another time.

Sad news coming out of Germany. It seems that love of soccer has proven deadly. To a six-foot catfish. He apparently attacked a soccer ball floating in a canal and suffocated when it got stuck in his mouth. The two-meter long fish was found on Monday in a sluice in the Main River with its teeth sunk into the blue and white plastic ball. “The catfish had evidently bitten into the ball and suffocated,” Bavarian police said in a statement. “Whether the fish was swept up in the current excitement about football in the wake of the EURO 2008 championship could not be ascertained.” Too bad, too. Because it looks like he was a whole lot better at catching the ball than Jens Lehmann.

FIFA says… yes. The latest FIFA World rankings were released today, and a month of World Cup qualifying and a little tournament called Euro 2008 has produced quite a shake up. Former leaders Argentina have slipped to sixth place, while Brazil have slipped from second to fourth. The new world order sees Euro 2008 champs Spain sitting on top, Italy moving up from third to second (huh?) and Germany in third. In fact all the successful Euro 2008 countries have made leaps up the table. Croatia are up to 7th, the Netherlands up to 5th. And somehow Scotland moved up one place to 16th despite taking the summer off. Euro nations who’ve slipped include Greece (down from 8th to 18th) and France (down from 7th to 10th.) But the big losers are, predictably, England. Their non-involvement in Euro 2008 has seen the team fall out of the top 10 (they were 9th) all the way to 15th. Ouchy. Top 20 below: 1. (4) Spain 2. (3) Italy 3. (5) Germany 4. (2) Brazil 5. (10) Netherlands 6. (1) Argentina 7. (15) Croatia 8. (6) Czech Republic 9. (11) Portugal 10. (7) France 11. (24) Russia 12. (12) Romania 13. (13) Cameroon 14. (20) Turkey 15. (9) England 16. (17) Scotland 17. (18) Bulgaria 18. (8) Greece 19. (14) Mexico 20 (16) Ghana

The eleven giant statues of Euro 2008 players are broken down and removed from Zurich train station. Once they’d sawn off Michael Ballack’s head, Euro 2008 was officially over. Photo credit: AP Photo/Keystone/Eddy Risch

Sepp Blatter says there’s a Plan B for World Cup 2010, should South Africa prove incapable of hosting. He didn’t say what it was, just that he had one. For all we know Plan B could be a piece of paper with PANIC!!! written on it in big letters. Let’s hope not though, eh? Here’s exactly what the king of FIFA said recently: “I would be a very negligent president if I hadn’t put away in a drawer somewhere a plan B,” said Blatter. “However, only a natural catastrophe would change things. “If we had to activate the plan B, we would take our decision after the Confederations Cup.” Anyone else notice Sepp sending mixed signals there? Making clear there’s a Plan B seems like an obvious threat to South Africa to get it together before he takes his tournament elsewhere. Then the “only a natural catastrophe” line suggests Plan B is just a worst case scenario contingency plan. But the final line suggests he’ll see how things look after the Confederations Cup in June 2009. The CC is basically a warm-up gid for the big thing, so Blatter’s implying that if he doesn’t like what he sees then the curtain’s coming down early on South Africa 2010. Should it come to that, what do you think Plan B is? Obviously we can only speculate right now, but logic dictates it’s going to involve relocating the World Cup to a country with all the stadia and infrastructure in place and good to go at short notice. Maybe a repeat of World Cup 2006 in Germany? Maybe another traditional football country with loads of stadiums, like England? Maybe the USA, always mooted as a potential World Cup stand in? Could be anywhere really. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. My feeling is that the Seppster was just having one of his infamous headline grabbing moments (and to be fair, he’s good at it) in order to give South Africa a little scare. Whatever happens, the 2009 Confederations Cup is going to carry a lot more intrigue than usual next summer.

If you have always dreamed of playing international football, but perhaps lack the skills to play for a real country, have we got the tournament for you. The VIVA World Cup begins July 7 in Gällivare, Sweden. Or Gällivare, Samiland, depending on your point of view. This competition is, of course, not to be confused with the FIFA World Cup, which fields teams from actual sovereign nations. VIVA is a whole different animal. The participating men’s teams in this year’s Cup are Sapmi (Samiland), Iraqi Kurdistan, Syriac (or Suryoye, or Assyria), Padania and Provence. For the women, Sapmi and Kurdistan. What, you’ve never heard of these countries? There’s a good reason for this. They don’t exist, at least as actual, recognized sovereign states. The tournament has been set up by the New Federations Board, established to represent nations which aren’t recognised as sovereign states. Its members include Monaco (not to be confused with the club side), Tibet, Zanzibar, Somaliland, Romani Nation (representing Romani people around the world), South Moluccas, Rijeka (Croatia’s third largest city, which was briefly a free state in the 1920s) and the Chagos Islands. Some of the claims to independence are in deadly earnest (provisional member Chechnya, for example), while others are more fanciful. Even Sealand, a micronation set up in 1967 on an abandoned steel platform in the North Sea, six miles off Suffolk, fields a national team, though in their case they have appointed Danish side FC Vestbjerg to play on their behalf. Great excitement. But it’s not quite the tournament it could be. There will be some teams missing. Teams that, for some reason, don’t want to hoist the Nelson Mandela Trophy (pictured.) Håkan Kuorak, the vice president of the Sami Football Association, is excited about the competition, but feels that several big teams are missing, such as top ranking Zanzibar, Gibraltar and Greenland. And who can blame him? Who wouldn’t want to watch a meeting between these sporting giants? Håkan is making the final preparations for the competition that is taking place at two grounds in Gällivare. The opening ceremony won’t be as pretentious as some of the ceremonies that precede large international events today – no acrobats, no synchronized chiffon scarf waving and no historical events recreated through the medium of dance. But for those who love a bit of pomp and ceremony, Håkan promises a parade of (five) flags, a number of speeches, a couple of joiks (Sami folk songs) and a special appearance by the tournament’s reindeer mascot. I’m sold. They had me at “reindeer mascot.” Oh, and “joik.” They really had me at joik.

Click here to follow our Germany vs Spain Euro 2008 Final LiveBlog

We’re six rounds into World Cup qualifying for the South American CONMEBOL teams, and Brazil is in 5th place out of ten countries. If this were the end of qualifying, Brazil would have missed automatic CONMEBOL qualification and would have to play the 4th place CONCACAF team for any shot at going to the World Cup. Show of hands if you predicted this? Yeah, me neither. Welcome to CONMEBOL qualifying, where Argentina and Brazil are always automatically expected to go through, and the competition is usually for the remaining two or three slots. Not so this year. Paraguay is the shock #1 team with 13 points, followed by Argentina(11), Colombia(10), and Chile (10). And Brazil? Fifth, with nine points in six games, with draws to Argentina, Colombia and Peru and a shock 2-0 loss to Paraguay. (Full table is at the bottom of the post.) The good news for Brazil is that only a third of the eighteen qualifying games have been played, and with luck Ricky Kaka will be back from knee surgery before too long. And Brazil is talking about firing coach Dunga, which could shake things up a bit. But for the moment, here are how things stand: World Cup Qualifying Nuts and Bolts How many teams are in CONMEBOL? Only ten: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. How does a CONMEBOL team get to World Cup? Compared with all the twists, turns, pots and byes that we talked about yesterday in CONCACAF, CONMEBOL qualification is extremely straightforward. Ten teams, home and away legs with each one. total of eighteen games per country. Top four go through, fifth place plays the fourth-place CONCACAF team, home and away, for the final berth. Where do things stand now? The teams just finished the sixth of eighteen rounds. In the most recent round, Uruguay beat Peru 6-0, Bolivia beat Paraguay 4-2, Ecuador and Colombia had a nil-nil draw, Brazil and Argentina did the same, and Chile beat Venezuela 3-2. Rounds 7 and 8 will take place on September 6 and 10. Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  Paraguay 6 4 1 1 13 5 +8 13  Argentina 6 3 2 1 9 3 +6 11  Colombia 6 2 4 0 4 2 +2 10  Chile 6 3 1 2 9 9 0 10  Brazil 6 2 3 1 8 4 +4 9  Uruguay 6 2 2 2 15 6 +9 8  Venezuela 6 2 1 3 9 10 -1 7  Ecuador 6 1 2 3 7 13 -6 5  Bolivia 6 1 1 4 7 17 -10 4  Peru 6 0 3 3 3 15 -12 3 (Are you interested in blogging about any of these teams, or any other national teams currently not being covered for World Cup Blog? Email our editor, Daryl Grove, at daryl[at]theoffside[dot]com.)

This week we’re going to take a look at how things are shaping up when it comes to World Cup qualifying in the various confederations. Today? CONCACAF, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. (Are you interested in blogging about any of these teams, or any other national teams currently not being covered for World Cup Blog? Email our editor, Daryl Grove, at daryl[at]theoffside[dot]com.) CONCACAF and World Cup 2010 How many countries? 35 (Complete list at the bottom of the page) How many teams qualify for World Cup 2010? 3 qualify automatically. One more can qualify if they win a two-game playoff with the 5th place CONMEBOL (South America) team. How do teams qualify? Two preliminary rounds are played to narrow the field to twelve. The first takes the pool from 35 countries to 24. The second takes it from 24 to 12. These twelve are divided into three groups of four teams each, and then then play a home and away leg, round-robin style. Top two teams from each group advance to the fourth round, where they’ll also play a home-and-away leg round robin. And the top three finishers from that final group of six go to the World Cup. The fourth place finisher will play the 5th place team from CONMEBOL in one home and one away game for the final spot. The thirteen teams in the top four “pots” got a round one bye — Mexico, USA, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Guatamala, Canada, Guyana and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines . The remaining twenty-two teams had to play for the final 11 Round 2 spots. The teams that advanced to Round 2 were: Barbados, Saint Lucia, Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Grenada, Suriname, El Salvador, and Netherlands Antilles. (Round 1 results are here.) Where do things stand now? Round 2 has just finished, and we have our final twelve teams. The US beat Barbados 9-0 on aggregate. The first leg was a painful 8-0 thrashing. In the second leg, coach Bob Bradley tried out some new players, and the US won 1-0. Guatamala beat Saint Lucia 9-1 on aggregate — 6-0 in the first leg and 3-1 in the second. Trinidad and Tobago beat Bermuda 3-2 on aggregate — losing 1-2 in the first leg, but coming back with a 2-1 victory in the second. Cuba beat Antigua and Barbuda 8-3 on aggregate — winning 4-3 in the first leg and 4-0 in the second. Mexico beat Belize 9-0 on aggregate — 2-0 in a rather lackluster first leg, and a much more promising 7-0 in the second. Jamaica beat Bahamas 13-0 on aggregate — 7-0 first, 6-0 second Honduras beat Puerto Rico 6-2 on aggregate — 4-0 first, 2-2 draw second Canada beat St. Vincent and the Grenadines 7-1 on aggregate — 3-0 first, 4-1 second Costa Rica beat Grenada 5-2 on aggregate — 2-2 draw first, 3-0 2in second Suriname beat Guyana 3-1 on aggregate — 1-0 first leg, 2-1 second El Salvador beat Panama 3-2 on aggregate — losing 1-0 in the first leg before coming back 3-1 in the second. Haiti beat Netherlands Antilles 1-0 on aggregate — 0-0 draw in the first leg, 1-0 win in the second. And now the qualifying groups for Round 3 are set: Group A United States Guatemala Trinidad & Tobago Cuba Group B Mexico Jamaica Honduras Canada Group C Costa Rica El Salvador Haiti Suriname Complete list of all CONCACAF teams, lovingly ripped off from Wikipedia: North American Zone Canada Mexico United States Central American Zone Belize Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panama Caribbean Zone Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Aruba Bahamas Barbados Bermuda British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Cuba Dominica Dominican Republic French Guiana Grenada Guadeloupe Guyana Haiti Jamaica Martinique Montserrat Netherlands Antilles Puerto Rico Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Saint-Martin Sint Maarten Suriname Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands U.S. Virgin Islands