This month, Vietnam played only one game with Afghanistan in the third qualifying round of Asian Cup 2019, the opening match of newly-hired head coach Park Hang-seo. The 0-0 score was enough for local players to enter the final round.
It meant that Vietnam improved 13 places from the 125th position in November’s rankings, while the Philippines rival (top in the previous rankings) fell 6 positions to 124th. The Thailand national squad ranked third in the region, and world’s 130th.
Germany remains top of the rankings this month, following by Brazil and Portugal. While in Asia, the national teams of Iran, Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea respectively placing on the list, all have tickets for World Cup 2018.
The next FIFA rankings will be announced on January 18th, 2018.
However, the FIFA rankings formula P = M x I x T x C has been mired in controversy, following codes and conditions apply to the calculation of points:
M: Points for a victory (3 points), a draw (1 point) or a defeat (0 point)
In a penalty shoot-out the winning team gains 2 points, the losing team 1 point.
I: Importance of a match with the following weighting:
Friendly match (including small tournaments): I = 1.0
World Cup qualifier and continental qualifier: I = 2.5
Continental final competition and FIFA Confederations Cup: I = 3.0
World Cup final competition: I = 4.0
T: Strength of opposition calculated according to the following formula:
[200 - ranking position of opposition] ÷ 100
Only the team at the top of the ranking is assigned the value 2.00 (teams ranked 150th and below are assigned the minimum weighting of 0.50)
The ranking position is taken from the opposition’s ranking in the most recently published FIFA world ranking.
C: The strength of a Confederation. When calculating intercontinental matches, the mean value of the Confederations to which the two competing teams belong is used. It is calculated on the basis of the number of victories by confederation at the last three FIFA World Cup competitions./.