President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter of FIFA.

As a follow-up to my last article about the World Football Elo Ratings, Ahmed asked me to provide the top 50 teams from the latest FIFA rankings, along with the corresponding ratings from the Elo. But first, I will discuss the FIFA system, and how it is calculated.

The FIFA Coca-Cola Men’s World Ranking System

In 1993, FIFA introduced its monthly ranking system. In 2005, the powers that be decided that the system was too complicated, and initiated a study to implement a revision to simplify the calculation.

“Transparency and simplicity – the key principles guiding the revision – have been combined with sporting criteria (i.e. the reality of world football) and statistical requirements to establish the new and simplified method of calculation that the FIFA Executive Committee ratified at its meeting in Leipzig, Germany, on 7 December 2005.

The most important change to the calculation of the ranking is that it will no longer take into account the last eight years of results but only four. At the same time, all of the other factors previously taking into account (result, importance of match, strength of opponents, regional strength, number of matches considered) were tested, analysed and, in some cases, totally revised. In fact, two of the factors that were previously used (goals scored and home advantage) will no longer have any impact on the ranking.

The new method was applied immediately after the FIFA World Cup â„¢, namely, with the first edition published on 12 July 2006.”

Source: FIFA.com: Ranking Procedure and Schedule.

Calculation of points in the FIFA World Ranking

In the following quoted material, FIFA explains their calculation system. Note the emphasis on simplicity. It reminds me of a quote from Forrest Gump. “Stupid is as stupid does.”