The WC XXI is about to begin and we are curious to know who will be the world champions this season!

I was thinking about Elo Ratings and how much it represents the actual situation of each NT. The (incredibly good) work of ogie takes in account many seasons by an equal form. Some NT were performing really well 4 or 5 seasons ago, but now have poor performances and they are still in high ranks. Other problem is the number of matches played in qualifying phase that makes a 8-0 NTs (in 5 teams groups) "better" than 6-0 NTs (in 4 teams groups), for example. And there were no "rewards" for teams that qualifies for the latter stages of WC.

With all this in mind, I am testing a ranking that takes in account the last 2 WCs, with different weights (weight x 1 for WC XIX and weight x 2 for WC XX). I implemented a correction factor for qualifying phase (for 4 teams group) and 10% rating reward for every phase qualification, including the final.

My goal is not to substitute ogie ELO RANKING, but giving an alternative way to analyze NT strength instead. It may help some NT coaches to analyze their team evolution in the last few WC and give some light over the most probable contenders in each group/phase.

I hope that you all enjoy it!

Thanks for the work you put in, on many occasions.

Interesting topic, agreed that is complicated to feel relative power of every NT due to theirs previous brillant/bad performances. This gives and idea of "recent" NT power not the "actual" ones but that's always nice to know.

Many thanks for the job, really appreciated

I know it all. But it is always cool to make rankings...

I want to see how many qualifiers I can predict with it and analyze why some teams do not get in WC Finals.

linkleo911 wrote: OVR POS / NT / Strength Group A #5 ROMANIA 1575 #6 MEXICO 1378 #10 HUNGARY 1283 #26 SPAIN 994 Group B #3 USA 1761 #22 SWEDEN 1057 #27 SWITZERLAND 994 #33 CANADA 952 (...) Group D #2 SLOVAKIA 1781 #4 GERMANY 1705 #25 CZECH REPUBLIC 997 #31 TURKEY 962

Well, it has predicted 4 of 6 qualifiers until now. Romania was really bad in this cycle, losing all games and Spain played well and achieved qualification in a bot win over Hungary; Sweden have lost to Canada and it has cost the qualification (in my opinion); Slovakia and Germany were easy to predict...

Let's see what we will have in the other groups!