International Team Ratings – May 2007

This months ratings are a little late, but fortunately there was very little international action in April so there’s not going to be much of a change. Ratings are for all games finished by April 30, 2007.

International Team Ratings – April 2007

Here’s the team ratings which include games finished on March 31, 2007. Euro and African Nations Cup qualifiers have helped move folks around a little, and Brazil finally overtakes france for the top spot.

International Team Ratings – March 2007

Here’s the team ratings which include games finished on February 28, 2007. As you can see the U.S. has moved up a couple of spots, but that’s mostly due to a large clustering of teams around them. A little movement one way or the other can cause the change.

International Team Ratings – February 2007

Here’s the team ratings which include games finished on January 31, 2007. Once again a new team has been added to the rankings. Welcome Comoros, a small island group north of Madagascar in eastern Africa. They don’t look completely horrible (though we have only two official results so far), so they’re all the way up at 175th in the Rankings.

International Team Ratings – January 2007

Here’s the team ratings which include games finished on December 31, 2006. So these are the year end ratings. I’ll try and come up with ratings at the beginning of each month from here.

International Team Ratings – December 2006

Here’s the team ratings which include games finished on December 10, 2006.

Month of Birth Data for World Cup 2006

There is an ongoing discussion in US Youth Soccer circles over the consistent advantages kids born earlier in the year have when it comes to making youth teams. As food for thought, the following lists the months of birth for all of the players from 2006 World Cup rosters as well as how the US figures into that list.

Month	WC-OF	WC-GK	USA-OF
January	65	9	2
February	59	7	3
March	50	7	3
April	51	10	0
May	59	6	7
June	46	10	1
July	49	9	1
August	60	7	2
September	54	6	0
October	53	9	0
November	48	6	0
December	46	10	1

Here’s the data broken down into quarters and converted to percentages to help clarify the data:

Quarter	WC-OF	%	WC-GK	%	USA-OF	%
1st 1/4	174	27.2	23	24	8	40
2nd 1/4	156	24.4	26	27.1	8	40
3rd 1/4	163	25.5	22	22.9	3	15
4th 1/4	147	23	25	26	1	5

As you can see, the effect is barely noticeable when looking at all of the rosters (particularly when you remove the USA from those numbers) but is stark and clear from the USA roster. 80% of the American field players were born the first half of the year, and only Eddie Pope was born in the last three months among the 20 field players.

This data matches what we have tended to see at the youth levels from the US, with precious few players from the later months of the year making youth teams. I’ll let people draw their own conclusions from this.

Data is from FIFA .

International Team Ratings – November 2006

Here’s a new set of International ratings for the midweek qualifying matches. Obviously not a lot of movement since the last post, but I figured I’d get these up. Enjoy.

MLS Begins Youth Development Program

MLS unveils new youth program

As guessed previously, players will retain collegiate eligibility.

Long overdue move from MLS and over time should be a boon to American soccer.

International Team Ratings – October 2006

Massive computer failure has crippled my blog in its infancy so I’m trying to get some stuff out while I try and get it fixed.

Anyhow, one thing I can do is post updated international ratings. Note: there was a minor modification in the rating formulas that might cause slightly more team movement than normal.