CAIRO: Did you know that Egypt is now the 17th best country in the world in football? Out of 205 officially registered teams, this is not a bad situation to be in. New FIFA standings show that Egypt jumped 15 places thanks to its winning of the African Cup of Nations. So we are now literally looking down on countries like Greece, the European champions who are 19th, Uruguay, a World Cup winner, and established soccer nations Croatia, Poland, Colombia, Romania, Paraguay, Russia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Scotland, Peru and Hungary. We re better than the African countries going to the World Cup this summer. Remember Cote d Ivoire? It s now 32, where Egypt was before the African Cup. Ghana is 48, Togo 59 and Angola 60. We re numero uno in the Arab world. The nearest rival is Tunisia in slot 23, Morocco 26, Saudi Arabia 35. Palestine is 138. Before we get a swollen head, let s also mention that those we literally look up to include Brazil at number one, followed by the Czech Republic, Holland, Argentina and France. The United States and Turkey, countries that not long ago were not on the soccer map, are greater than us. A reality check also reveals that even though Egypt is the new king of Africa, Nigeria, at number 12, wears the continent s crown. Cameroon is one ahead of us at 16. Fortunately, we played neither in the African Cup. (For those interested in countries in the news, we re head and shoulders over Israel at 44, but we re not quite like Denmark, 14. Last and least is American Samoa). What really catches the eye is that we re better than - surprise, surprise - Germany which stands at number 19, tied with Greece. Germany is a country that has won three World Cups (Egypt has been in just two World Cups, winning nothing). Germany has a better overall World Cup record than Brazil. Germany has produced the likes of Seeler, Beckenbauer, Muller, Breitner, Maier, Rummeneggi, Klinsmann, Matthaus and Ballack. So how were the tables turned? We ll get to that in a moment, but certainly nobody saw it coming. In 1993, when FIFA started tabulating such things, Germany was country number one in the soccer world; Egypt was 26. The gap closed a bit the following year, 5-22, but opened up again in 1997, 2-32. In 2002, the difference was greatest, 4-39. The following year saw Germany slip to 12th with Egypt at 32. Up until last year the difference was 16 places, 16-32. So for the past dozen years the distance between Egypt and Germany was much more than a stone s throw. How, then, did Egypt silently sneak up and eventually pass the German powerhouse? FIFA has kindly taken a time-out to answer, in ways even you and I can understand. Here s how it works. Taken into consideration for the rankings of all countries are: World Cup finals matches, World Cup preliminary matches, FIFA Confederations Cup matches, continental championship final matches, continental championship preliminary matches and friendly matches. So far, so good. The ranking list is produced by a computer program which assigns a team points for every match, according to clearly defined criteria. The factors taken into consideration are: Winning, drawing and losing, number of goals, home or away match, importance of the match (multiplication factor) and regional strength (multiplication factor). This means that a win will not simply bring three points and a draw one, as would happen in a national league. The calculation is more complicated - but easy nonetheless. The following is an actual, easy example. Let s assume that three teams of different strengths are involved in a small friendly tournament on neutral territory. Before the tournament the three teams have the following points' totals: Team A (630 points), team B (500 points) and team C (480 points). Now, in the case of a 3:1 win, team A is allocated a total of 21.0 points. But as the more highly ranked team, the win itself only earns 17.4 of these. The lower-rated team B still earns 1.7 points. Had the weaker team B won the match 3:1, they would have received 27.4 points, while the then negative total for team A would have been rounded up to 0.00. For a 2:2 draw, team B would have earned a few points more than A, for being the lower-rated team. Had the games above been played during a World Cup final round, then the points total would first be doubled, and then multiplied by the continental weighting factor for the teams involved. The easiest thing to remember is that for the ranking to accurately reflect current form, great importance is attached to matches played in the last 12 months. Basically, the current year s points total is averaged in with points earned in the seven preceding years, with weightings that decline progressively the further back we go. After eight years, results are dropped from the calculation altogether. So now you know and you can tell all your friends why Egypt is better than Germany.
