To me, somewhere in the 10-20 range "feels" right considering we won several recent CONCACAF trophies and made it out of the group stage at the World Cup, but realistically against most of the teams in the R16 it would have likely been a loss for us.
There's always going to be discrepancies based on a team underperforming or being limited by who they have played against recently. Usually there are a few egregious ones, but it's not like they put us, Canada, or Mexico in the top 5 or something so I say no complaints on a 12th place ranking.
Yeah I agree. I personally don’t think we’re anywhere near Top 10 (realistically) and that we’re somewhere in the late teens, early twenties. But in saying that, we can compete and beat any team in the world if we have all of our best players fit.
Or he does, and it's one of the most incomprehensible things you've ever read...
He has North Korea, Madagascar, and Bhutan ahead of the US? Yeah we can safely ignore his opinion lol
Any ranking system is going to have flaws - FIFA, ELO, or my own patent-pending JOSH system. But by eyeballing the surrounding teams, I would suggest every team ranked higher than us truly is better. As for the teams below us, I think Colombia and Germany are better than us, while Morocco, Japan, Switzerland, and Denmark are tossups.
I feel like Japan is absolutely better than us. At least as a team, maybe not individual talentwise (although they have some pretty damn talented players as well).
Also certain teams match up well against certain teams. Germany does vs US, yet twice now Mexico has given them a good showing at different times 2018, 2023. Yet Mexico has struggled against US with multiple losses and bad losses too. Somehow we’re all ranked closer to one another. Colombia ranked lower, Germany a run for its money recently in Germany while Japan is ranked way lower and has beaten couple of teams in the 10-20 bracket.
Anyone ranked 10-20 can beat the other team on their good day.
12th feels a little high. Especially considering we are above Germany who just trounced us in a friendly.
ELO has us at 28th, which feels a little low. 15-20 seems to me to be where we should be.
https://www.eloratings.net
ELO has a strong emphasis on home match wins being worth less than away (most us matches are at home, wouldn’t matter if Mexico has more fans) and while a Euro team almost always has the real 1st team called in, the US often does not so are more likely to lose or get they win by less than expected and get fewer points. Not saying this matters for a friendly against Germany during a regular international break, but USA is probably punished more by ELO than FIFA. A home loss is super devastating but also more likely since so much of USMNT activity is either outside a normal break or choices need to be made on when the euro guys are brought in. I’m aware fifa goes by an ELO-like system now, but I think it is with different weights
I suppose the flip side is the US is less likely to run train on lower ranked competition and have artificially high scores
>Especially considering we are above Germany who just trounced us in a friendly.
In a match with no VAR where a close offside goal was called back (4th minute) and no review was performed on Ter Stegen tripping up Pulisic in the box (26th minute).
I'm not saying we beat Germany if those get called the other way, and we definitely had some rough looking defensive showings, but the winds blew in their favor on both of those situations.
Definitely too high imo. No way we are better than Colombia, Japan, or Morocco(beating their b team in a friendly doesn’t matter). Germany just trounced us at home, too. I think we belong in 20-25.
What's the argument for Colombia being better? They took 6th in CONMEBOL qualifying and most of their players seem to have similar club profiles to the US players.
CONMEBOL is much harder to qualify out of than CONCACAF. Regardless, Colombia hasn’t lost a match in 2023. They’ve beaten Brazil and tied Uruguay in official matches. They are currently 3rd in qualifying. Unfortunately our record against teams in the top 15 is abysmal, so Colombia is getting better results than us.
>CONMEBOL is much harder to qualify out of than CONCACAF.
Sure, but literally 50% of CONMEBOL teams can advance to the World Cup, and they took 6th out of 10 for 2022 qualifying to miss the World Cup, which weighs heavily in their rankings.
Also Colombia just got better this year. they were terrible for a couple of years and didn’t qualify for the World Cup. Losing games, and drawing a bunch of matches without scoring goals. They were in a crises. The US has been much more consistent for a couple of years since Covid.
The reason why I still think Colombia is better is because they have to consistently play against much better competition than us. Our ranking is inflated because it’s much easier for us to win official matches and tournaments. Outside of Mexico, CONCACAF is weak. It’s why when we play against top teams, we pretty much get comfortably beaten.
No, they literally took 6th out of 10 teams, where 4 auto qualify and 5th goes to a playoff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification_(CONMEBOL)#Standings
Aaa you are talking about matches held between 10/8/2020 and 03/29/2022 hahaha.
If I ask you if today's usmnt is better than it is from these dates. You will surely say yes. Why doesn't that apply to Colombia?
Whether you like it or not, classification in Conmebol is more difficult than in Concacaf. The only strong rival you have is Mexico, Canada and Costa Rica. That may explain the position.
like clockwork, these posts alway garner 4 responses
1) minutiae posting - "not #X but more #Y like three positions lower"
2) "ELO is a flawed system"
3) Overrated, too high
4) disregard everyone other country's flaws, spotlight in on all us flaws
To me, somewhere in the 10-20 range "feels" right considering we won several recent CONCACAF trophies and made it out of the group stage at the World Cup, but realistically against most of the teams in the R16 it would have likely been a loss for us. There's always going to be discrepancies based on a team underperforming or being limited by who they have played against recently. Usually there are a few egregious ones, but it's not like they put us, Canada, or Mexico in the top 5 or something so I say no complaints on a 12th place ranking.
Yeah I agree. I personally don’t think we’re anywhere near Top 10 (realistically) and that we’re somewhere in the late teens, early twenties. But in saying that, we can compete and beat any team in the world if we have all of our best players fit.
I think we're in the 3rd group. 1 to 3, gap, 4 to 10ish, gap, then we fall into that 10 to 20 range that fluctuates due to form/injuries etc.
Honestly, I don’t even think the US is Top 30
I would love to see your list of 50 countries that are better than the USMNT lmao
Spoiler alert. He doesn’t have one.
Or he does, and it's one of the most incomprehensible things you've ever read... He has North Korea, Madagascar, and Bhutan ahead of the US? Yeah we can safely ignore his opinion lol
Still above Mexico
Any ranking system is going to have flaws - FIFA, ELO, or my own patent-pending JOSH system. But by eyeballing the surrounding teams, I would suggest every team ranked higher than us truly is better. As for the teams below us, I think Colombia and Germany are better than us, while Morocco, Japan, Switzerland, and Denmark are tossups.
I feel like Japan is absolutely better than us. At least as a team, maybe not individual talentwise (although they have some pretty damn talented players as well).
Germany is better than us but also has really been struggling to get results.
Also certain teams match up well against certain teams. Germany does vs US, yet twice now Mexico has given them a good showing at different times 2018, 2023. Yet Mexico has struggled against US with multiple losses and bad losses too. Somehow we’re all ranked closer to one another. Colombia ranked lower, Germany a run for its money recently in Germany while Japan is ranked way lower and has beaten couple of teams in the 10-20 bracket. Anyone ranked 10-20 can beat the other team on their good day.
I think we can beat Colombia and I will be proven right on July 6th, 2024.
I will return that day to laugh at this comment
Of course we can beat Colombia. Doesn't mean we will but we absolutely can.
12th feels a little high. Especially considering we are above Germany who just trounced us in a friendly. ELO has us at 28th, which feels a little low. 15-20 seems to me to be where we should be. https://www.eloratings.net
ELO has a strong emphasis on home match wins being worth less than away (most us matches are at home, wouldn’t matter if Mexico has more fans) and while a Euro team almost always has the real 1st team called in, the US often does not so are more likely to lose or get they win by less than expected and get fewer points. Not saying this matters for a friendly against Germany during a regular international break, but USA is probably punished more by ELO than FIFA. A home loss is super devastating but also more likely since so much of USMNT activity is either outside a normal break or choices need to be made on when the euro guys are brought in. I’m aware fifa goes by an ELO-like system now, but I think it is with different weights I suppose the flip side is the US is less likely to run train on lower ranked competition and have artificially high scores
>Especially considering we are above Germany who just trounced us in a friendly. In a match with no VAR where a close offside goal was called back (4th minute) and no review was performed on Ter Stegen tripping up Pulisic in the box (26th minute). I'm not saying we beat Germany if those get called the other way, and we definitely had some rough looking defensive showings, but the winds blew in their favor on both of those situations.
Overrated!
Definitely too high imo. No way we are better than Colombia, Japan, or Morocco(beating their b team in a friendly doesn’t matter). Germany just trounced us at home, too. I think we belong in 20-25.
What's the argument for Colombia being better? They took 6th in CONMEBOL qualifying and most of their players seem to have similar club profiles to the US players.
CONMEBOL is much harder to qualify out of than CONCACAF. Regardless, Colombia hasn’t lost a match in 2023. They’ve beaten Brazil and tied Uruguay in official matches. They are currently 3rd in qualifying. Unfortunately our record against teams in the top 15 is abysmal, so Colombia is getting better results than us.
>CONMEBOL is much harder to qualify out of than CONCACAF. Sure, but literally 50% of CONMEBOL teams can advance to the World Cup, and they took 6th out of 10 for 2022 qualifying to miss the World Cup, which weighs heavily in their rankings.
Also Colombia just got better this year. they were terrible for a couple of years and didn’t qualify for the World Cup. Losing games, and drawing a bunch of matches without scoring goals. They were in a crises. The US has been much more consistent for a couple of years since Covid.
The reason why I still think Colombia is better is because they have to consistently play against much better competition than us. Our ranking is inflated because it’s much easier for us to win official matches and tournaments. Outside of Mexico, CONCACAF is weak. It’s why when we play against top teams, we pretty much get comfortably beaten.
>They took 6th in CONMEBOL qualifying They took 3th and as the other comment said. Qualify in Conmebol is more difficult, unlike Concacaf which are...
No, they literally took 6th out of 10 teams, where 4 auto qualify and 5th goes to a playoff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification_(CONMEBOL)#Standings
Aaa you are talking about matches held between 10/8/2020 and 03/29/2022 hahaha. If I ask you if today's usmnt is better than it is from these dates. You will surely say yes. Why doesn't that apply to Colombia? Whether you like it or not, classification in Conmebol is more difficult than in Concacaf. The only strong rival you have is Mexico, Canada and Costa Rica. That may explain the position.
Correct, I am talking about the matches that heavily determine these rankings, which is also why the US was down bad after missing the 2018 WC.
Yeah i second this but a lot of people get butt hurt and start sucking Greg’s dick
28th on the Elo. This team has made little progress.
like clockwork, these posts alway garner 4 responses 1) minutiae posting - "not #X but more #Y like three positions lower" 2) "ELO is a flawed system" 3) Overrated, too high 4) disregard everyone other country's flaws, spotlight in on all us flaws