Another month’s Fifa world-ranking list has brought another interesting list of countries to have passed Ireland by with Equatorial Guinea, Australia and the United Arab Emirates all leaving Martin O’Neill’s side behind in the February edition.
Ireland are now 67th, dangerously close to their lowest-ever ranking of 70th, which they hit last July. More worrying is the fact that Ireland are 33rd in Europe and unless Fifa spring a major surprise between now and the summer by changing the way the seedings for the World Cup qualifiers are laid out, that means James McCarthy and co will almost certainly be in Pot Four when their route to Russia is laid out at the Konstantinovsky Palace in St Petersburg on July 25th.
The qualifying system has yet to be formally decided but with the same number of nations (13) to qualify out of Europe, there is no particular reason to believe Fifa will see fit to move away from the structure employed in 2010 and 2014, when nine group winners progressed along with four from play-offs.
Assuming they stick with the system and with Russia qualifying automatically as hosts, Ireland lie five places off 28th, the minimum European ranking that they would have to achieve in order to make it into the third tier of seeds.
Little to cheer about
In general terms, that equates to a world ranking somewhere towards the wrong end of the 40s, something Ireland haven’t held since August 2013. That month, they were number 44 but a combination of some poor results and the decreasing worth for ranking purposes of the team’s fine form in 2011 contributed to a slip of 15 places in September. There has been little enough really to cheer about since then.
O’Neill was actually fortunate in that Uefa use a significantly-different ranking system to decide their seedings and so Ireland were in Pot Two when the draw for the 2016 European Championship qualifiers was made. Ireland were handed a tough draw as it happens and their hopes of making it to France hang in the balance as the campaign approaches the half-way point but it might conceivably have been worse had the team been ranked four.
In the past, Irish teams have only suffered that fate twice and it has produced mixed results with Jack Charlton’s side finishing second to a group that also included Hungary, Northern Ireland and Malta to make it to Italy in 1990, while the side managed through most of the campaign by Stephen Staunton finished third to the Czech Republic and Germany in the Euro 2008 campaign. On the latter occasion, Slovakia had been the group’s third seeds.
Ireland’s hopes of filling that slot next time around are not yet dead but, assuming it is the July ranking list that is used for the purposes of the draw, there are only three games to play before the matter is decided and so an impressive run of results is required along with a slice of luck in terms of how the team’s rivals for 27th place fare.
The method for calculating the rankings is fairly complicated with points awarded in the first instance on the basis of results, the importance of games and the strength of the opposition. The ranking is based on performances over a four-year period with matches played more recently counting for more than earlier results which decline in importance on a sliding scale.
Individual results, though, can still make a significant difference and Ireland, would, for instance, be around 50 ranking points better off had they beaten Portugal in the US last June. That sort of number would account for almost half the ground that needs to be made up on Hungary, the team ranked 28th.
Home qualifiers
As it happens, two of Ireland’s games, the home qualifiers against Poland and Scotland have the potential to yield a lot of points – more than twice as many as the Portugal match or the forthcoming friendly against England due to their competitive nature and there is no shortage of more immediate motivation with terms of Euro 2016 qualification.
Like many managers in his position, though, O’Neill will be aware that wins now would not only keep Ireland firmly in the hunt for a place in France but might make the more distant journey to Russia a good deal easier to navigate.
