CHENNAI: On April 6, FIFA will tell football fans in the country that India are now ranked joint 101st in the world, locked in a four-way tie along with Estonia, Lithuania and Nicaragua. Don’t mistake it for an April Fool’s joke that came a week late. India really are set for their best ranking since May ‘96, when they were also 101st.
While FIFA rankings are often hard to predict, experts have foretold India’s rise. The leap is nothing short of miraculous — two years ago, FIFA’s March 2015 rankings had India at 173. But does that really mean anything? One of the more startling stats from Tuesday’s round of internationals is that if Bolivia had failed to beat Argentina — which they did 2-0 — India would have surpassed them in rankings.
Picture that! India better than a team good enough to beat Argentina on their day! Numbers can be used to paint any picture. There is another stat that was doing the round on Tuesday, touting the list of highest active international goalscorers. The first three spots had Cristiano Ronaldo with 71, Lionel Messi with 58 and Clint Dempsey with 56. The fourth? Sunil Chhetri with 53.
Under Stephen Constantine, India is playing much better than it did under his predecessor Wim Koevermans, but nothing in the team’s performance against Myanmar suggested being on the cusp of the top 100. So how did they do it? The answer lies halfway across the world in Cardiff.
In 2015, Wales completed an amazing climb up the table going from being out of the top 100 to being in the top 10. While their on-field performances were good, there was a significant strategy behind the rise. FIFA’s rankings calculator give points based on the strength of the opposition and multipliers depending on the competition — 3x for qualifiers, 1x for friendlies. So a team can manipulate rankings by picking and choosing friendly games, or avoiding them completely.
Like Wales did, going 17 months without playing one. As Express reported back in January, the AIFF has been employing a similar strategy.
Another team that implemented this strategy with great success is Romania, and one of the brains behind this was of a Romanian computer engineer named Eduard Ranghiuc, who was then hired by another national FA to devise a similar strategy. Now Ranghiuc is watching India’s progress with interest. “Someone at the Football House is really crunching those numbers,” he says.
“At the end of the day, FIFA ranking is about math, and you guys are good at it. If you understand the algorithm used for calculation, it’s easy to know when you’ll drop and when you’ll rise as results move from a time frame to another, or drop from the calculation altogether.”
And while you’re only as good as your last performance, having an inflated ranking has its benefits, as India found out in January. They found themselves in Pot 2 in Asian Cup qualifying, which meant a easier group.
That is a strategy they will be looking to employ again, should they qualify for the 2019 Asian Cup. When India last played the tournament in 2011, their poor rankings meant they were in the same group as Australia, South Korea and Bahrain. It is a scenario they will hope to avoid in 2019.
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com