Calculation of points for a single match

P = M x I x T x C

M: points for Match result

Teams gain 3 points for a victory, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a defeat. In a penalty shoot-out, the winning team gains 2 points and the losing team gains 1 point. (so if you lose you get 0 points since everything is multiplied together)

I: Importance of match

Friendly match (including small competitions): I = 1.0 (yes, friendlies are based only on how good the team you are playing is)
FIFA World Cup™ qualifier or confederation-level qualifier: I = 2.5
Confederation-level final competition or FIFA Confederations Cup: I = 3.0
FIFA World Cup™ final competition: I = 4.0

T: strength of opposing Team

The strength of the opponents is based on the formula: 200 – the ranking position of the opponents. As an exception to this formula, the team at the top of the ranking is always assigned the value 200 and the teams ranked 150^th and below are assigned a minimum value of 50. The ranking position is taken from the opponents’ ranking in the most recently published FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.

C: strength of Confederation

When calculating matches between teams from different confederations, the mean value of the confederations to which the two competing teams belong is used. The strength of a confederation is calculated on the basis of the number of victories by that confederation at the last three FIFA World Cup™ competitions (see following page). Their values are as follows:
UEFA/CONMEBOL 1.00
CONCACAF 0.88
AFC/CAF 0.86
OFC 0.85

Doesn’t look like an atrocious system on paper… let’s see how it applies to Brazil and the “far superior” Greece…

As we can see above, Brazil got 579 points for beating Argentina in a friendly. Not bad, right? It isn’t until you compare that Greece got 795 points (over 200 more) for beating minnows Latvia in a European World Cup qualifying match. To put it simply, according to FIFA playing qualifying games are 2.5 times more important than playing friendlies. That’s fine and dandy when everyone has to qualify for a competition, but Brazil doesn’t have qualifying matches to play as they are the host country and qualify by default. That’s why they keep tumbling down the rankings. It’s also a reason why countries like Colombia (9th), Peru (37th), and Venezuela (39th) shoot up the FIFA rankings as the team who won the CONMEBOL qualifying group (Brazil) is no longer playing group matches in 2014.

In short, don’t buy into the hype that Brazil is crashing – the team is still one of the best in the world and will be a favorite for the 2014 World Cup. When the FIFA rankings start taking score into account and not just “difficulty of opponent” (which is based on their faulty ranking system to begin with) then the rankings will become more credible. But as long as an 8-0 victory counts the same as a 1-0 victory I’ll continue to not put my faith in the accuracy of the FIFA World Ranking system.