the problem with soccer and rankings is that it suffers from wholly inadequate sample sizes, or alternatively, goals are too "big", encompassing and compacting

the problem with soccer and rankings is that it suffers from wholly inadequate sample sizes, or alternatively, goals are too "big", encompassing and compacting too much information, to be used for dissecting quality. soccer rankings can't give you much indication of relative ability, as chance overwhelms quality in rankings. that's one of the strengths of basketball (and other sports to varying degrees), both as a sport and as entertainment. games are won and lost on many samples that each count a small fraction toward the outcome. any single game's outcome can still be swayed by chance, but that's very unlikely for a series of games, upon which rankings are based.