England are #24 at the moment (provisionally for July 2014) down from #10 pre World Cup.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...s-group-stages

Well clearly we are a little way off the top 10 but its not the team's fault if the FIFA ranking are misguided in the yes are many..

Remember we do generally qualify pretty well which no doubt boosts our coefficient but must admit we will be in danger of slipping down the seeding table when it comes to being placed in a World Cup/European Championships group.

Better be careful. Scotland must be around there! We've been climbing recently.

That's just for the teams at the World Cup, not the actual fifa rankings, provisional or otherwise.

I was just being consistent. I already thought ours would be the toughest group beforehand, and I'd be surprised if anyone tried to argue that Costa Rica playing out of their skins made it somehow easier.

I could have taken the approach of some others and decided that the weaker sides having good World Cups are suddenly much better teams than England, but I'd rather look at results over a longer period. Like Algeria finishing bottom of our group in 2010 and failing to qualify for the 5 World Cups before that. Are they suddenly better than England because they beat South Korea and took a point off Russia to progress from their group? I'm not sure...

Different people are using the FIFA methodology to forecast the beginning of July FIFA rankings. Here is another one.

http://www.football-rankings.info/20...eview-and.html

This has England at #20

4 years is a long time in football, or most sports for that matter. Which is what you don't seem to get. A lot of so-called "minnows" have spent the last few years simply getting better, while England have been happily coasting along on their reputation.

Algeria isn't getting by on "luck" or being a mediocre team having a flukey world cup. The Algerians have improved their team dramatically since the last world cup (including by getting some players with dual French-Algerian nationality playing at a high level in Europe). The same could be said for many of the so-called "lesser" teams. They've taken deliberate steps to make their squads and tatics better, so they can go toe to toe with traditionally bigger footballing nations.

They aren't "suddenly" better than England. They've put in the work to become better than England. England are just basically too arrogant to pay attention to the improvements being made by smaller nations.

You can't keep living in the past and assume that because England were better 4 years ago, or 10 years ago, that they can't be overtaken by teams within a few years.

By the same token, you can't assume Algeria are now a force because they've had one half-decent World Cup (although I don't see why England couldn't have beaten the very weak South Korean side and taken a point off of Russia too before being knocked out by Germany). South Korea didn't become one of the established top 4 sides in the world after 2002, Ukraine didn't become an established top 8 side after reaching the quarters in 2006, and Ghana didn't become an established top 8 side after reaching the quarters in 2010. All three sides got either as far as or further in the competition than England, but failed to sustain that level afterwards.

At the moment you can't really make an argument that we are in the top 15-20 teams.

Not that I totally disagree with your points (there will always be sides that peak now and then), but what level has England sustained over recent years? Expectation and history alone do not make a team a force. I think there is some justification with the argument that England arrogantly sits on its past and expects things to just fall into place for them. Sure, teams like Algeria in four years time might well not quality for the next World Cup, but even if England do (that's not guaranteed), with their current mentality they're bound to fall yet again at the first hurdle.

With England it's usually a case of qualifying comfortably for the tournament and then reaching the last 16/quarter-finals before losing to a better team. I'd say we've generally sustained our status as one of the top 10-15 teams in the world over the past 12 years or so. Perhaps we thought ourselves better than that for a while but now I think reality has set in and people see we can't compete with the elite group of teams.

San Marino is not an easy game? They still have part time players don't they?

The first half of that sentence specifically references teams that qualify for the World Cup.

Yes but to qualify you play teams like San Marino

I'll go and move the goalposts at the other end.

Yes, there's two England's at play. In qualifying, you'd have to say England was a top ranking European side as we tend to qualify comfortably for tournaments. In tournament football, we play like a second tier European side below the likes of Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands.

That really doesn't counter what he's saying, which was referring to teams at the finals.

Not really. The post the poster was replying to was about playing Algeria 10 times.
You wouldn't get that in the finals.

That's a hypothetical point that still involves a team at the finals.

You say that you're using a time period going back over 20 years, but then asking if Algeria are 'suddenly' better than England.
No, they're not suddenly better, they've probably become better than England over a period of time.

I think people simply have to accept that England are no longer anywhere as good as their perception of them may lead them to believe.
Maybe we're around as good as teams like the USA or Costa Rica?
In the FIFA rankings I'd say that #20 would look just about right.

With so many football teams improving quite rapidly, other teams which we take for granted as being amongst the world elite due to their reputation can get left behind.

I agree. Algeria may well decline, but by the same token England can't just expect to be seen as good again. They still need to improve. Because if it isn't Algeria it'll be some other team who will leapfrog England.
Your status as a team in the top tier isn't static. You still have to do the work to improve. You can't just see yourself an elite team and hope that all other teams will get worse, or will only be better than you temporarily. That would be just hoping that your status will return to 'normal' as you think it should do naturally and all by itself.

There are several teams who are improving with some momentum. So even if say Algeria aren't as good in the next World Cup, there could be half a dozen other teams who are then better than England who we might not have expected to be.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, but unfortunately there's no solid reasoning or rationale in your post. Algeria have probably become better. Maybe we're as good as two teams you plucked out of the air. It would "look right" if we were ranked 20th in the world. You're not going to sway anyone like that. Try and answer the following questions with some facts and examples to back you up:

1) What exactly have Algeria achieved that makes them better than England?

2) What leads you to believe that 20th in the rankings would "look just about right"?

3) What makes us "around as good as" the USA and Costa Rica?

Algeria would hammer us.

But that nominal ranking of #20 wouldn't really explain why England have qualified top of their group for the last three major international tournaments. Algeria qualified thanks to an away goals win against Burkina Faso, who are ranked 60th in the world.

The problem with international football is that we have these spectacular tournaments every two years, in which teams play a maximum of seven games. There is no way that World Cup performance alone can be used to assess which teams are good and which are bad. People criticise the FIFA rankings, and the methodology they use isn't perfect, but as a way of judging relative ability they are better than tournaments.

Why not? They're the competitions which matter the most.
You could liken it to athletes who may do well at the smaller competition meetings but fail to deliver at the Olympics.
It's those big competitions which are the benchmark because they're the ones where teams try to do their utmost best to win. So you've got a much higher chance of all teams putting out what they believe their best possible sides are.

As in national football, some managers don't invest as much effort into the smaller cup competitions and focus more on the FA or European cup. You could win lots of friendly matches but if your opponents aren't treating it as seriously as you are then it's perhaps not always a true reflection of who the better team is when at their strongest.