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.
