Ireland to move up to 18th in Fifa Rankings

roryc

Last updated 9th May, Ireland are currently at 18th. A massive improvement from the last few years when we've been hovering around the mid-thirties and dropped as low as 51st.

http://www.fifa.com/worldranking/rankingtable/index.html

Germany have technically dropped to 3rd after their unexpected defeat to Switzerland over the weekend but it doesn't really make a difference. Portugal's shock 0-0 draw with Macedonia has seen them lose a massive 140 points which is unheard of for a friendly. England move to 6th, our Group opponents Croatia move to 7th and Italy 11th.

From a rankings point of view our group is tough, but just look at Germany's group. All 4 teams are the top 10 in the world. Rankings won't be updated again until after the Euro's when hopefully a decent result or two might push us up a bit, would be nice to solidify a top 15 position like we had for so long.

Hank Scorpio

What was the highest we were ever ranked? A good few years ago I think we were up to 12th but I'm not sure

Lister1

Pretty sure we have broken into the Top 10 before but these rankings are pretty meaningless tbh.

Skylinehead

nuxxx wrote: »

What was the highest we were ever ranked? A good few years ago I think we were up to 12th but I'm not sure

We were 6th in 93 :cool:

GLaDOS

nuxxx wrote: »

What was the highest we were ever ranked? A good few years ago I think we were up to 12th but I'm not sure

Wiki says the highest was 6th (1993) and lowest was 57th (1988)

Lister1

We were ranked 9 in 1994.

http://www.fifa.com/associations/association=irl/ranking/gender=m/index.html

Lister1

And 6th on....


Highest FIFA ranking
6 - December 1992. August 1993.

Oat23

nuxxx wrote: »

What was the highest we were ever ranked? A good few years ago I think we were up to 12th but I'm not sure

6th is our highest in 1993. We were 12th in 2005.

GavRedKing

Good to see the results are pushing us up the rankings.

Hopefully in the near future we wont be a pot 3 or 4 seed for the next Euro draw.

klose

Nice one great to see, was surprised to find out that friendlies count towards it.


Cue people going on about how awful we are and how badly well get done at the euros...

Posotivity is sparce round here.

Zebra3

Doesn't say much for the standard of international football.

Neil3030

whippedcream wrote: »

Posotivity is sparce round here.

So much so that its correct spelling proves elusive! :P

klose

Neil3030 wrote: »

whippedcream wrote: »

Posotivity is sparce round here.

So much so that its correct spelling proves elusive! :P

Ah I'm using a touch screen phone leave me alone

SteelyDanJalapeno

Zebra3 wrote: »

Doesn't say much for the standard of international football.

Wahey!

Didn't take long

recylingbin

Rankings only matter when the draws are being made. At all other times, they're pointless.

roryc

recylingbin wrote: »

Rankings only matter when the draws are being made. At all other times, they're pointless.

Definitely, the rankings are essentially meaningless but people underestimate the difference that being seeded higher can make. If we get through the Group stages this Summer we should be seeded higher for the next Euro's and 2018 World Cup, and it should make our qualification hopes for the next decade significantly easier.

In terms of rankings we basically owned 14th spot from 2002 - 2005

Fr Tod Umptious

Again the trend continues on Boards.ie

Irish ranking goes up = these rankings are good measure of international football.

Irish ranking goes down = these ranking are a waste of time, who cares

It works in reverse order for England around here too.
England up = ranking bad
England down = rankings good.

tolosenc

Actually, had they waited till last November to do the WCQ draw, rather than breaking pattern and going in July, we'd have been in pot 2. Would have had a much better chance of getting to Brazil.

Dante

While these rankings are pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things, they do give a rough reflection of how the team is doing. For instance, when Trapattoni managed his first game for the Republic in May 08, we were ranked #41 and are now up to #18. I think that's a fair representation of how we've been performing over that time period, losing only 8 of 44 games. On the other hand, when you look at the Staunton era, we dropped from #24th when he took over in January 06 to #35th in November 07 when he was sacked, again reflecting a pretty disappointing string of results.

mayordenis

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Again the trend continues on Boards.ie

Irish ranking goes up = these rankings are good measure of international football.

Irish ranking goes down = these ranking are a waste of time, who cares

It works in reverse order for England around here too.
England up = ranking bad
England down = rankings good.

It's funny how people just randomly make **** up to suit their agenda, looking through the posts so far

roryc wrote: »

Definitely, the rankings are essentially meaningless but people underestimate the difference that being seeded higher can make.

Lister1 wrote: »

Pretty sure we have broken into the Top 10 before but these rankings are pretty meaningless tbh.

recylingbin wrote: »

Rankings only matter when the draws are being made. At all other times, they're pointless.

Yea we went up and everyone is going on about how important they are....

Not good enough. Should be at least top ten and playing expansive, exciting football.

Trap out.

tolosenc

rarnes1 wrote: »

Not good enough. Should be at least top ten and playing expansive, exciting football.

Trap out.

We haven't won the World Cup yet. Joke of a manager.

kitakyushu

tolosenc wrote: »

We haven't won the World Cup yet. Joke of a manager.

My own theory is the FAI don't want to mess up the lovely look of their "3" jersey by having to put some showy old star over the crest.

Lumbo

kitakyushu wrote: »

My own theory is the FAI don't want to mess up the lovely look of their "3" jersey by having to put some showy old star over the crest.

Be typical of them to ruin an already good jersey with some stupid meaningless star.

cson

Shouldn't we already have a star there anyway for the Carling Nations victory? :pac:

Zebra3

TiltedBrain wrote: »

Wahey!

Didn't take long

Last win over a quality side, over ten years ago.

kitakyushu

cson wrote: »

Shouldn't we already have a star there anyway for the Carling Nations victory? :pac:

and another for the Iceland triangular tournament. Czechoslovakia already had a European Championship but that's the one they really wanted.

Happy Monday

Zebra3 wrote: »

Last win over a quality side, over ten years ago.

France 0 Ireland 1 WC qualifier 2009

Zebra3

Happy Monday wrote: »

France 0 Ireland 1 WC qualifier 2009

Nope, it finished 1:1. :rolleyes:

Pudsy33

Zebra3 wrote: »

Happy Monday wrote: »

France 0 Ireland 1 WC qualifier 2009

Nope, it finished 1:1. :rolleyes:

Nope, over 90 mins it was 1 0. We won the match, butvwasnt enough to prevent extra time.

killwill

Zebra3 wrote: »

Nope, it finished 1:1. :rolleyes:

So put that in your pipe and smoke it. lol

SteelyDanJalapeno

Pudsy33 wrote: »

Nope, over 90 mins it was 1 0. We won the match, butvwasnt enough to prevent extra time.

Pudsy33

TiltedBrain wrote: »

Pudsy33 wrote: »

Nope, over 90 mins it was 1 0. We won the match, butvwasnt enough to prevent extra time.

Am I incorrect? Anyway, we played France off the pitch.

SteelyDanJalapeno

Pudsy33 wrote: »

Am I incorrect? Anyway, we played France off the pitch.

Your 100% correct! Ed Norton = Zebra right now!

We've beaten a half dozen decent sides in the last 10 years anyway,

Italy 2 - 0 last year off the top of my head.

kitakyushu

TiltedBrain wrote: »

Was that him watching the highlights of his performance for ROW last night?

retalivity

bloody hell, ukraine are 50th & poland are 65th.
czech republic are also 26th, so technically, we're far from the worst team in the championship!

keith16

retalivity wrote: »

bloody hell, ukraine are 50th & poland are 65th.
czech republic are also 26th, so technically, we're far from the worst team in the championship!

Wow, didn't realise Poland were that low....wonder if not having to qualify counted against them?

Skid

kitakyushu wrote: »

and another for the Iceland triangular tournament. Czechoslovakia already had a European Championship but that's the one they really wanted.

That's true, Czechoslovakia never recovered from their defeat in that tournament.


1986 - Ireland trounce Czechoslovakia 1-0 in Iceland

1993 - Seven years of torment about that tournament lead to the Czechs and Slovaks going their separate ways, and agreeing never to talk about the Icelandic Triangular Tournament again

Hannibal

retalivity wrote: »

bloody hell, ukraine are 50th & poland are 65th.
czech republic are also 26th, so technically, we're far from the worst team in the championship!

The hosts of tournaments always drop in the ranking because they're playing less competitive games for the two years prior so less chances to pick up ranking points, watch Brazil fall in the next two years.

We were the only team seeded in the third pot in the qualifiers to qualify so maybe we were the worst at that time but that was coming on the back of Stauntons reign so we were a lot lower than we should be.

Morzadec

Might well not have qualified for 2012 if we had had a worse ranking.

In fact I'd go as far to say as our ranking (and subsequent seeding) is why we made Euro 2012 and didn't make World Cup 2010 (okay tons of other factors, most obviously the Henry incident but the point remains that overcoming France was a big ask, certainly compared to Estonia.)

Getting seeded in the playoffs was massive. We got a piss easy draw in the playoffs (all respect to Estonia). Why? Because we beat Armenia in the final game which knocked up our ranking and resulted in us being seeded. We could have drawn the match and still qualified to the playoffs but would have likely gone out so that win was massive imo.

So no, you don't win anything with rankings but they're definitely not meaningless or unimportant