3 ms·

Germany competes in Europe, while the US competes in the confederation of oceania or something like that. Even with some corrections for the strength of the opp

• Someone 5y ago
  As always, such rankings do not always reflect true rankings (if only because that isn’t a transitive relation), but FIFA uses an Elo-like system that tries to compensate for the strengths of opponents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings#2018_ranking_system_update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings#2018_ranki...) That’s reflected in the fact that, currently, 8 of the top 10 countries are from Europe (the other two are the usual suspects Brazil and Argentina) One difference is that, unlike in chess, there still are many uneven matches. If you’re Liechtenstein, Andorra, or Gibraltar, for example, you’ll play lots of qualifiers against Spain, France, Germany, and the like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Nations_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Nations_League corrects that a bit, giving such teams much better chances to tie or even win games). You don’t see such things in chess.