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Ranking as of 20 March 2002

1 France

2 Argentina

3 Brazil 788

4 Italy

5 Colombia

6 Portugal

7 Spain

8 Mexico

9 Netherlands

10 Germany

11 Yugoslavia

12 England

13 United States

14 Czech Republic

15 Paraguay 685

16 Sweden

77 Haiti (Olympics will not improve ranking)

FIFA needs to revise the guidelines of their ranking system. Why should they value past performances less then most recent results. The first questionable rank is Colombia they failed to qualify for World Cup 2002, and they were eliminated in the first round of both WC 1998 and 1994, 5th place. Netherlands failed to qualify for World Cup 2002, but they reached the 1/4 finals in 1994 and the semifinals in 1998,9th place. England won a Wold Cup have some of the best players in the World, 12th place. Germany won 3 World Cups, 10th place. Sweden finished in third place in WC 1994 and qualified for the 2002 World Cup, 16th place. The criterias used in this ranking system needs revision. Here are some of the ranking procedure used by FIFA.

"The FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking includes the national A-teams of all FIFA member associations who play international matches. Taken into consideration for the ranking are all international-A match results over a time span of the last eight years:

World Cup finals matches

World Cup preliminary matches

Continental championship final matches

Continental championship preliminary matches

FIFA Confederations Cup matches

Friendly matches

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)

Strenght of the opponent

Regional strength (multiplication factor)

The basic idea behind the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings is the same as that for a normal championship: a team can win a certain number of points for each match, depending on the results, and the points are totalled. The association with the highest total is at the top of the ranking list.

But by contrast to normal league championships, for the World Ranking a team's points for a match do not depend solely on whether they win, lose or draw. Also affecting the total for a match will be the number of goals scored and conceded, the venue and the importance of the match. In addition, the strength of the opponent is considered, so that a win over a weakly rated opponent will earn fewer points than one against a strongly rated one. This means that a win will not simply bring two or three points and a draw one, as would happen in a national league. The calculation is more complicated since it incorporates the factors mentioned above. "

Source (FIFA)