Conventional wisdom suggests the
European Football Championships are harder to win than the World Cup.
There's reason behind this: despite increased familiarity with staff
and styles, all teams come from a strong FIFA confederation and this
means fewer easy wins and more Groups of Potential Fatality.
We can take a look at the final set of
FIFA World Rankings before a tournament to suggest the quality of
each field. These rankings are about as foolproof as a Bond
villain's plan or FIFA's internal governance, but they are still the
best mathematical evaluation available. (Even still, I won't ever
believe the
United States were ever the fourth-best team in the world).
Also, given they are chundered out by computer according to
wonderfully complex formulae each month, in theory they are equally
uneven.
The table below suggests how powerful
each tournament since the start of the millennium has been, using
average and median
FIFA ranks as a guide. A low average suggests a stronger field, a
low median suggests that more of the world's elite teams took part.
|
Tournament |
Teams |
Average FIFA rank |
Median FIFA rank |
Alleged Easybeat
|
|
Euro 2000 |
16
|
15.3
|
12.5
|
Slovenia, rank 45
|
|
2002 World Cup |
32
|
21.8
|
21.5
|
China, rank 50
|
|
Euro 2004 |
16
|
20.8
|
17
|
Latvia, rank 52
|
|
2006 World Cup |
32
|
33.5
|
24.5
|
Togo, rank 61
|
|
Euro 2008 |
16
|
20.4
|
11
|
Austria, rank 101
|
|
2010 World Cup |
32
|
26.0
|
19.5
|
North Korea, rank 105
|
|
Euro 2012 |
16
|
16.6
|
11.5
|
Poland,
rank 65
|
As you can see, the average FIFA rank
for the past two World Cups has raised markedly as more nations
outside FIFA's top 20 obtained qualification. This of course
doesn't take into account home-field advantage, which will surely
serve Poland well in this tournament. These numbers are also
somewhat swayed: each team wins games in order to qualify, which in
turn boosts their world ranking.
According to FIFA's boffins, Euro 2012 could be the strongest
tournament since Euro 2000.
Team strength should NEVER be calculated with average or median measurements.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, team skill level is not distributed evenly. E.g. the difference between teams ranked 1st and 10th is MUCH different than teams ranked 50th and 60th. It's most certainly not a linear relationship.
Also, lets create a hypothetical group X. Group X has 4 teams - ranked 1st, 2nd, 50th, and 51st. The average ranking of this group is 34 ... but teams 50th and 51st are going to have to play much better than the skill level of 34th to progress through the group.
The Euros are "easier" to win than a World Cup because it's a shorter competition. The shorter the competition, the more statistical variation in results. The shorter the competition, the easier it is to "get lucky".
It takes no genius to conclude that a weaker team is considerably more likely to win a 1-game series against a stronger opponent than a 7-game series. This same principal applies to knockout soccer competitions.
Devin - you make good points and I agree with you.
DeleteTo suggest simple average/median numbers tell the full story would be farcical. However, I'd argue these figures have their place, probably as a set to be proved/disproved rather than the be-all and end-all. Despite an admittedly rubbish final statement, these numbers were aimed to provide some background context rather than a full "solution" (which I accept makes the last statement rather redundant!).