BY KUNLE SOLAJA.

As reported last week by Sports Village Square, the November 2017 ranking released this Thursday by FIFA has thrown up unpleasant surprise, sending down the ladder, the World Cup-bound Super Eagles.

From the previous 41^st position, Nigeria has fallen down the ladder nine places to number 50 in the world. In essence, the good run of Nigeria in the past eight weeks has paradoxically brought the fortunes of the team down, rather than improving on it.

Flash back: Last week, Sports Village Square reported on the impending slump in FIFA ranking.

This month, the Super Eagles were held to 1-1 draw by Algeria in Constantine and the team later inflicted a 4-2 defeat on Argentina, two-time World Cup holders and the world’s number four ranked team.

Instead of rising, the Super Eagles slumped in a FIFA ranking that has defied logic. Cameroon, which as at last month ranked 42 behind Nigeria played a 2-2 draw with lowly ranked Zambia and yet places 45, five steps ahead of Nigeria.

While FIFA puts Nigeria at 50, the parallel organisers of monthly ranking, the World Football Elo Ratings put Nigeria at 41 with a point haul of 1,691 as against the paltry 671.07 that FIFA gave to Nigeria.

The highly subjective ranking formula will confound even the best mathematician.  The formula is based on multiple factors that are summed up as P = M x I x T x C.

 M states whether the match is won, lost or drawn. A win fetches three points while a drawn match has a point and a loss fetches zero.

  This is multiplied by I which stands for the importance of the match. A World Cup qualifying match is given the value of 2.5 as against 1.0 for a friendly match. So, Nigeria’s win over Malawi for instance will be 3 multiplied 2.5 which in itself should fetch seven points.

   In the ranking formula, the item T stands for the relative strength of the opposition. The pertinent question is whether the item “T’’ had no bearing when a Nigerian side ranked 41^st pummelled the fourth ranked Argentina in Russia earlier this month.

       According to FIFA, “the strength of the opponents is based on the formula: 200 – the ranking position of the opponents.
“As an exception to this formula, the team at the top of the ranking is always assigned the value 200 and the teams ranked 150^th and below are assigned a minimum value of 50. The ranking position is taken from the opponents’ ranking in the most recently published FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking”.

So, the points obtained from the match are multiplied by the importance of the match and then the strength of the opposition and the continent involved.

Most football analysts have often kicked against the FIFA ranking claiming that it is disproportional and does not often represent the relative strength of teams.

Owing to this, alternative rankings by football statisticians, such as that of World Football Elo Ratings and the rec.sport.soccer Statistics Foundation rankings have emerged.

According to an Associated Press (AP) report in June 2006 when the US team was ranked fourth in the world in April 2006, even their players were shocked and felt flattered! That was even after they were beaten 4-1 by Germany.

The ranking started in December 1992 and had been subject of intense debate. On at least two instances, FIFA has had to adjust the yardsticks.

According to FIFA’s explanations, the basic logic of the “calculation is simple: any team that does well in world football wins points which enable it to climb the world ranking.

FIFA OFFERS EXPLANATIONS

In exchange of communication involving eleven different e-mails in 2013, FIFA explained exclusively to Sports Village Square’s editor -in-chief, why Nigeria dropped in ranking despite a win in competitive match and draw and lone goal loss in friendly encounters.

Giovanni Marti of the FIFA Media Department was the first to respond, providing two documents and giving a web link for further clarification.

He asserted that FIFA was not calculating the ‘results and rankings on a hypothetical basis’.

The documents provided are Fact Sheets and frequently asked questions on the ranking. Giovanni explained that the ranking is not based solely on current results, but older results have impact on recent scores.

“It’s simply an accumulated depreciation over the past years…meaning that as some matches grew older, they are devalued according to a calculating scheme.

He backed up the claims with the score sheet of Nigeria’s matches since 2010.

After his response, other FIFA staff members – Nicolas Maingot and Matthias Kunz also joined in providing documents to back up the ranking.

The first set of match log sent was questionable. Nigeria’s matches carried wrong dates and were three years older than schedule.

For instance, Nigeria’s 1-0 defeat of Benin played on January 16, 2010 was captured as having been played on January 15, 2006. All matches of 2010 were captured as 2006 and a day earlier than actual.

Those of 2011 were similarly captured as those of 2007 and so on.  Considering that age is an important factor on current ranking, it is envisaged that it could have had negative impact on Nigeria’s total point haul.

Match results are depreciated according to age. A team’s total number of points over a four-year period is determined by adding the average number of points gained from matches during the past 12 months; and the average number of points gained from matches older than 12 months depreciates yearly.

Matches played four years ago are discounted to have 20% value. Those older than four years have zero value as they are deleted. Match average from Year 3 have a 30% value while those of last year have 50% value and the ones of the current year carry full value of 100%.

It was explained that four years, covering one World Cup cycle, are taken into account in calculating the ranking.

When the issue of wrong dates were brought up, Giovanni Monday sent another e-mail with another log for Nigeria explaining that his colleagues from the Ranking unit gave him another version as in the earlier one, the dates slipped in the excel-list when programming.

“But now my colleagues remark that everything has been controlled and everything is correct. There are no effects on the current points that Nigeria have”.

In other words, only matches played since January 2010 are taken into account in the November 2013 ranking as some earlier matches which reflected in October and September 2013 have waned off.

For instance, in the September 2013 ranking, the earliest match that featured was the 1-0 defeat of Mozambique in a 2010 World Cup qualifying series played on October 11, 2009.

Employing the 12-month cycle, the match was wiped off in the October 2013 ranking which began with the 3-2 away win against Kenya on November 14, 2009.

In the ranking released in October 2013, a Nigeria’s 3-2 away win in Kenya had been wiped off as it could not make the four-year calendar cycle. The calculation thus began with Nigeria’s 3-1 loss to Egypt in one of the opening matches of the Angola 2010 Africa Cup of Nations.

In that match, Nigeria had zero point.  So, while the September rankings took into consideration 17 games played in 2010 for instance, the matches had reduced to 16 in the November ranking.

The calculation  for November 2013 thus run: In a cycle spanning from the 3-1 loss to Egypt in January 10, 2010, to the 1-0 loss to Guinea in Conakry on October 10, 2010, Nigeria played 16 matches and obtaining 5,567.68 points the average of which comes to 348 points.

But when the points are discounted at 20% according to the four year cycle the matches have passed through, they come to a discounted value of 69.6 points.

If the explanations offered by FIFA four years ago were to be taken now, it means matches that Nigeria had played as at November 2014 had been wiped off.

A new cycle began with the 0-1 loss of Nigeria’s home based Eagles to the 2015 Africa Nations Cup –bound Cote d’Ivoire. The match was played in Abu Dhabi on January 15, 2015.

It was followed up two days later with a Nigerian 2-0 defeat of Yemen. The third match that must have been taken into account was the 0-1 loss to Uganda in Uyo in a match organized to mark Vincent Enyeama’s 100^th cap.

With the calculations that FIFA is employing, it might take another decade before Nigeria breaks into the top 20 in the monthly ranking.