Football: Indian National Team news ...

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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by prasen9 »

Jay, did you see the ELO ratings? India Football Ratings Maybe the FIFA rankings look okay because the FIFA rankings of our opponents are also similarly inflated. We should note that the ELO ratings are not pure ELO ratings but sort of tweaked. If you draw with a similarly ranked team, you actually lose points if it is at home. See the scheme ELO Rating System

Let's see. We beat Macao, #220, drew with St. Ktts #151, beat Mauritius #168, Kyrgiztan #161, Nepal #194, Myanmar #182, Cambodia #208, Puerto Rico #184, Laos #208, lost to Turkmenistan #136, Iran #35. So, it seems we did not really beat anyone under #160. In the ELO system, we even lost ponts for the St. Kitts match because they were close enough to us and the system docks points from you if you play at home and cannot beat as similarly ranked team.

The FIFA ranking is weird. Is it worth trying to optimize our FIFA rankings? Or should we just go and play good opposition to try to improve?

The World ELO rating based rankings: Brazil, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, France, Colombia, Italy, England, Belgium
The FIFA rankings: Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Switzerland, Poland, Portugal, Chile, Columbia, Belgium, France

Which one looks better? I guess it depends whether you are a Spaniard or a Swiss ... or Polish or Italian ... or English or Columbian.

I tend to like the ELO rating ranked teams slightly better.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

My undertanding is that ELO ratings just looks at head-to-head results and does not consider the importance of the matches (that is how it was being done in tennis etc - meaning which event is being played had no significance; I haven't looked at football ELO). It will not work well, when some matches are simply more important, and also when teams do not have enough chances to face other teams at various ranking levels. The importance of the matches are set by the association. FIFA says so, through their ranking system; the friendlies are 1/3rd as important in their rankings. So does ATP when grand slam matches are assigned so much more points than a challenger match against the same opponent. I don't know how much differently players play a match in tennis depending on the event, but the idea in tennis is that better players will be the opponents at better events. The players play say 40-50 matches that go into the ranking. So it works somewhat fine in tennis. I don't think ELO can work well in football. It can, over some 40-50 matches, but then that takes 4-5 years, and teams change in quality a lot during that period, and it will be unreliable (which is why FIFA has 0.5, 0.3 and 0.2 weights for points in the previous 3 years).

Because FIFA wants world cup and continental cups to be much more important (monetary calculation, I suppose), they don't want to give weight to friendlies. The added problem in football is that they have the world split into confederations and there aren't enough matches of importance between the confederations. Then the sizes of confederations are different (S.America and Oceania with around 10, N.America with 35, Asia with 45, and then Africa and Europe with 55, roughly). So the number of "important matches played within confederation" are also uncertain. So, the rankings of groups of countries in some confederations get stuck in some ranges. With no rhyme or reason or ranking logic on arranging friendlies, the rankings of some teams can also get stuck in some ranges. In such cases, just giving them some points by default with some consideration of the opponent's ranking, like FIFA does, may work a bit better than an ELO, which needs enough games and enough chances to face teams of higher ranking. In tennis, one does get some chances, as anybody ranked say 165, will end up playing enough top-100 players within a 1 year period. In football, a team at 165 may not get to play anybody in the top-50 for ages. So ELO rankings can get stuck in local groups for very long time, but FIFA rankings would allow some shake-ups, and let some teams to get out of the rut every now and then and try to prove themselves. I think FIFA rankings work a little better than ELO for all these reasons.

Yeah, ELO's 168 ranking for us now is pure crap. We have got out of that 140-180 group. We're Probably in the 100-140 group now, closer to say 120.

FIFA will over-rank teams and then they drop slowly (you can see that pattern in many team's ranking history at the FIFA site). Teams go up rather quicker to some spots, and then drop at a slower rate. We too went up quickly recently, but haven't started our slide down-slide yet. We may go up a bit more to around 90 next year and then drop by end of next year, based on the results from the friendlies that we play. Then, depending on what we do at UAE for the Asian championship in early 2019, which is where we get a chance, we can rise to say top-75 because of the big points offered. Then we may drop slowly again, unless we start winning some of the 2022 WC qualifying matches against top-8 Asian sides and rise further! So it goes...

But who knows. We may lose to Myanmar and Macau at home, crash out of qualifying for Asian Cup (I don't see how) and will be back to square one too. Hope not.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by rajitghosh »

All said and done, the final success metric for the Indian team should be how they perform against the Asian powerhouses- Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, UAE etc. While the performance in recent times deserves a lot of credit and holds a lot of promise, India has not played the biggies. The rankings would follow automatically if we start challenging the biggies.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:09 am Jay, did you see the ELO ratings?...

Let's see. We beat Macao, #220, drew with St. Ktts #151, beat Mauritius #168, Kyrgiztan #161, Nepal #194, Myanmar #182, Cambodia #208, Puerto Rico #184, Laos #208, lost to Turkmenistan #136, Iran #35. So, it seems we did not really beat anyone under #160. In the ELO system, we even lost ponts for the St. Kitts match because they were close enough to us and the system docks points from you if you play at home and cannot beat as similarly ranked team.
That is the problem with ELO. These teams are always playing each other in AFC. They don't get enough chances against higher ranked teams. We at least had a chance to get a FIFA 114 Puerto Rico to come, play and lose to us, but who can Mauritius or Kyrgiz Republic get to play friendlies against them? ELO rankings of teams below top-10 in Concacaf, AFC, Oceania and Africa are stuck in the low end because they never play higher ranked teams, enough of which is needed in ELO for anybody to make a move in ELO. It is fine at the top-50 range of world football, and maybe better than FIFA though.
The FIFA ranking is weird. Is it worth trying to optimize our FIFA rankings? Or should we just go and play good opposition to try to improve
No question of improving and all that. There is no time for that, and you don't really improve by playing top teams much anyway. You coach and train well, and identiy talent better in your domestic system to improve. FIFA ranking is all that matters in everything, and people accept your quality, at the ranking FIFA says you have. Period; end of story :) ...

By hook or crook, go up in FIFA rankings if you can. Pay teams to come and lose to you, if you can! Okay, maybe not that... Anyway, use whatever cooked up high ranking you can have, to get people in your own country to take you seriously, and to have more kids play the game (and forget about games with sticks stuck into the ground). Then try to go up the ranking further by gaming the ranking system even more. If you are a #75 ranked India, you get serious interest in any big name top-75 teams to come and play friendlies with you. Much better chance than current #55 Haiti or #47 Burkina Faso, or #60 Morocco may find. Then we can improve further by looking at quality etc. Let us go up to #75 or #60, however we can, in 2 years. That is my hope.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

rajitghosh wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:33 amAll said and done, the final success metric for the Indian team should be how they perform against the Asian powerhouses- Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, UAE etc.
Yes. We are not at that level yet. UAE at home in India, maybe. Not Iran, Japan, S.Korea, or Australia in AFC. We will probably lose 0-3 to 0-5 to all of them, wherever we play.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by rajitghosh »

jayakris wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:51 am
rajitghosh wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:33 amAll said and done, the final success metric for the Indian team should be how they perform against the Asian powerhouses- Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, UAE etc.
Yes. We are not at that level yet. UAE at home in India, maybe. Not Iran, Japan, S.Korea, or Australia in AFC. We will probably lose 0-3 to 0-5 to all of them, wherever we play.
Try to gradually bring those down to 0-1. That would be a sign of progress. On another note, there is certainly some improvement. How much has ISL contributed? Or is it purely because of Stephen Constantine?
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

rajitghosh wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:13 amOn another note, there is certainly some improvement. How much has ISL contributed? Or is it purely because of Stephen Constantine?
I am beginning to think that ISL is helping. There are a few good coaches in ISL now, and all 10 head coaches are foreigners (4 from Spain, 3 from England, 1 from Portugal, 1 from Netherlands, 1 from Costa Rica)... So the Indian players are probably much more used to the modern game, thinking, training, practice, etc, because of that. It helps that we do not have "Olympians" in football (like in hockey) to act big and put road blocks in everything. Having sucked in football for so long, I think nobody can dictate terms in India to these foreign coaches, nor play games with them. And many ISL owners are serious football supporters too. All that probably helps. Our players get to play with quite a few decent foreign players as well.

And then, I think Constantine is a good coach. I had always felt that. I never understood how we went into a stagnation period at the end of his last tenure. I think he coaches defense well, and ISL experience of the players may have made coaching easier for him now, than in his first stint. Let us hope for the best.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by prasen9 »

jayakris wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:44 am That is the problem with ELO. These teams are always playing each other in AFC. They don't get enough chances against higher ranked teams.
It could be, but, ELO also handsomely rewards if you can get one upset. You do meet these teams in the bigger tournaments. For example, we met #35 Iran. You beat them and if you are #160, you can go up maybe 30 or even 50 slots! And, this particular system would reward you by 10-15 spots if you draw with Iran in an away match. We got #79 Oman in 2015 and did not do anything either. But, yes, ELO prevents teams from going up if they do not have a chance to play top team. That is why chess players avoid tournaments where there are mostly lower ranked players.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:29 pm
jayakris wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:44 am That is the problem with ELO. These teams are always playing each other in AFC. They don't get enough chances against higher ranked teams.
It could be, but, ELO also handsomely rewards if you can get one upset. You do meet these teams in the bigger tournaments. For example, we met #35 Iran. You beat them and if you are #160, you can go up maybe 30 or even 50 slots! And, this particular system would reward you by 10-15 spots if you draw with Iran in an away match. We got #79 Oman in 2015 and did not do anything either. But, yes, ELO prevents teams from going up if they do not have a chance to play top team. That is why chess players avoid tournaments where there are mostly lower ranked players.
Exactly. If you are at say #160 and have truly improved in quality to a #120 team, thanks to some 2-3 significantly better-quality players and a better coach (quite possibly India's case), the chance to upset say a #35 would still be 1 in 10 at best, and the win would probably come in one of the 5 home ties when everything went right. But a #160 team will not get ten top-50 teams to play, even during a 10 year period, to make a 50 spot ranking jump that way. Not even 10 top-100 teams in a 5 year period to try for a couple of wins to move up 40 spots. That is all too long, considering the ups and downs of team quality, which really can vary by 20-30 spots every couple of years quite easily. But, with ELO, you will generally get to play people somewhere in your range of rankings and no amount of wins really helps much - like in our past 16 games. That is why ELO does not work in football and keeps some teams in some ranking ranges for very long periods.

So I guess we will probably stay at #160 in ELO till early 2019, whatever we do. Except, say, if we invite some 6 top-50 teams for friendlies next year (pay them big!) and beat say 1 of them at home. Then suddenly ELO may bring us up to 120 (and FIFA will drop us from 100 to 130 by late last year because of the 5 losses, due to point average divisor). Otherwise, we have to wait till early 2019 and beat say 3 teams in the top-75 to reach the QF or SF of Asian Cup. FIFA may move us up from 100 to 80 or something, and ELO may raise us from 160 to 65 for all I know. That is how I understand it.

I prefer FIFA. If I get it right, ELO is too "sticky" for long periods and is very slow in reflecting teams' quality changes -- at least in the below-125 rankings where your options to play outside of "your usual group of teams" are limited.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by Prashant »

prasen9 wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:09 am The World ELO rating based rankings: Brazil, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, France, Colombia, Italy, England, Belgium
The FIFA rankings: Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Switzerland, Poland, Portugal, Chile, Columbia, Belgium, France
This is obviously a very small piece of evidence, but I'd immediately take the FIFA list here. Chile is unquestionably a top ten team to the eye test right now, and Switzerland are better than France or England on a neutral field.

I should add - I haven't digested the math of the soccer ELOs that Prasen linked to. But a generic ELO rating has a built-in recency bias that works well (to be equivalent to FIFA valuing recent games more). For example, if you start at the same ELO & play similar opponents 10 times, and have a 7-3 record: you will end up with a higher ELO if you lose 3 & then win 7, compared to if you win 7 & then lose 3.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by prasen9 »

If you don't have the time, this is the nutshell: The system was adapted to football by adding a weighting for the kind of match, an adjustment for the home team advantage, and an adjustment for goal difference in the match result.

These are the weights:
60 for World Cup finals;
50 for continental championship finals and major intercontinental tournaments;
40 for World Cup and continental qualifiers and major tournaments;
30 for all other tournaments;
20 for friendly matches.

In football, the teams cannot avoid low ranked teams for ever. They have to play them at the Asian tournaments, world tournaments, etc. This is where bad teams have to beat good teams to come up in the ratings. If they can't avail of these chances, they will remain in the lower rungs of the ratings.

I would suspect that if you want to predict the outcome of a match, using the ELO ratings would be a better predictor than using the FIFA ratings. Obviously, I need crunch a lot of data to prove that and I don't have the program or software to do it. So, it is a conjecture ...
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by arjun2761 »

Agree with Prasen that the ELO rankings may well be a better indicia of quality of play. Our FIFA ranking has really gone up by doing well against weaker teams. I do buy that consistently beating lower teams shows improvement but I think most of our wins are quite narrow and probably with fairly even possession. That is, we may have improved but not by a lot.

We did play better teams in the latest WC qualifying cycle and played pretty poorly finishing last in our group and among the worst of the 40 or so teams in the Asian WC qualifying third stage. In the match against Iran for which highlights are available on youtube, we were comprehensively beaten with our goalie playing well to keep the score down. Unless, we have improved drastically since then, I don't see this team as being a top 100 team or even close to that.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by prasen9 »

jayakris wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:29 pm But a #160 team will not get ten top-50 teams to play, even during a 10 year period, to make a 50 spot ranking jump that way. Not even 10 top-100 teams in a 5 year period to try for a couple of wins to move up 40 spots. That is all too long, considering the ups and downs of team quality, which really can vary by 20-30 spots every couple of years quite easily. But, with ELO, you will generally get to play people somewhere in your range of rankings and no amount of wins really helps much - like in our past 16 games. That is why ELO does not work in football and keeps some teams in some ranking ranges for very long periods.
But, we got Turkmenistan #136 by ELO at home. If we had beaten them or even drawn with them, we would have gone up. This was in March 2016. Since we did not do that, we are still around #160 range. We got #79 Oman in Oct 2015. Loss again. #31 Iran in Sep 2015. Loss. #80 Oman in June 2015 at home. Loss. #131 Palestine, Oct 2014. Loss. #145 Tajikistan, Aug 2013. Loss. #137 Palestine, 2013 at home. Loss. We have beaten nobody below the #160 range in the last several years. Not for the lack of opportunities.

A win in any of these matches would have moved us 15-20 places a lot more if we did something against Iran or Oman. A draw against Oman somehow would have moved us a lot ...

I hope we win at the next level of the Asian competition against some good teams and maybe a draw here and there against the top ones.

Anyway, who are we playing next? Is the Palestine game on or not?
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Thu Sep 07, 2017 12:39 amBut, we got Turkmenistan #136 by ELO at home. If we had beaten them or even drawn with them, we would have gone up. This was in March 2016. Since we did not do that, we are still around #160 range. We got #79 Oman in Oct 2015. Loss again. #31 Iran in Sep 2015. Loss. #80 Oman in June 2015 at home. Loss. #131 Palestine, Oct 2014. Loss. #145 Tajikistan, Aug 2013. Loss. #137 Palestine, 2013 at home. Loss. We have beaten nobody below the #160 range in the last several years. Not for the lack of opportunities.
Well, that is the point I am making. All of those matches were over 2 years ago under the earlier coach and in the first few months of the new coach. Even the 1-2 loss to TKM was 1.5 years ago (I think when Chhettri was injured and couldn't play, IIRC). The team has had some significant changes since then, and it is possible that Constantine's real impact started showing about 15 months ago. The streak since then has to be showing an upgrade in the team quality. How much - we don't know. FIFA over-ranks the improvement, and ELO will wait till we play somebody good! FIFA is a little too quick to react to team quality changes and wins, and ELO seems pretty slow (if there aren't upset wins).

5 of the 11 starters that played 2 years ago against Oman and Iran are gone (and 12 of the 21 in the team!). Considering that 2 spots in the team are Gurpreet and Subrata the top-notch goalies we have had, and then the main four Jeje/Chhettri/Sandesh/NarayanDas, the turnover is 10 of the remaining 15. It is quite a different team, ever since June 2016 when our current unbeaten streak started. Eugenson and Holicharan in the mid field and Anas Edathodika in defense joined last June and they seem to have made a difference. And guess who are listed as the top picks in the ISL draft this November? Eugenson and Anas. Constantine has kept up closely with what is going on in ISL and has brought in some players. This guy Anas was not even picked in the Kerala Santhosh trophy team a few years ago, and he is one who was helped by the ISL experience. Then we have some good subs like forward Balwant Singh whom I mentioned earlier (who scored 3 goals in 3 matches since he joined recently).

I think we do have a team that is better by some 20-40 spots up from around 150-160 where we were early last year. In my opinion, we are at least somewhere in the 125 range in the world. Otherwise we would not have had this current run, even against the minnows. ELO will not count it much, and will wait - like saying "No benefit of doubt to you. Beat somebody good and you can go up big". On the other hand, FIFA would over-rank it and take us up to 100 and slowly drop us. Like saying "You get the benefit of doubt. But the more minnows you play and any bad loss you get, we will keep dropping you". The truth is somewhere in between.
Anyway, who are we playing next? Is the Palestine game on or not?
Not sure. FIFA took it off the calendar and has not put it back in. I think it must be cancelled or something. As of now the next three are the remaining Asian Cup qualifiers. Macau (Oct 9) and Myanmar (Nov 13) in India and Kyrgiz Republic (Mar 26) in KGZ.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

arjun2761 wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:59 pmAgree with Prasen that the ELO rankings may well be a better indicia of quality of play. Our FIFA ranking has really gone up by doing well against weaker teams. I do buy that consistently beating lower teams shows improvement but I think most of our wins are quite narrow and probably with fairly even possession. That is, we may have improved but not by a lot.
Except for the 6-1 and 4-1 wins against Laos and Puerto Rico a year ago, we have generally had 1 or 2 goal margin wins. So I agree that our wins against the minnows have been of the narrow variety, and it is the one thing that dampens my enthusiasm a bit. But your guess is not correct on time of possession. All reports from these matches have been that India has clearly had much better time of possession and that we were in control. Including against #125 St. Kitts last month where we allowed a late equalizer. The defense seems to have solidified under Constantine, but we are still not great at finishing.
We did play better teams in the latest WC qualifying cycle and played pretty poorly finishing last in our group and among the worst of the 40 or so teams in the Asian WC qualifying third stage. In the match against Iran for which highlights are available on youtube, we were comprehensively beaten with our goalie playing well to keep the score down. Unless, we have improved drastically since then, I don't see this team as being a top 100 team or even close to that.
As I said above, my impression is that we have improved since the Iran and Turkmenistan losses 1.5 years ago (plus, Chhettri missed those two games; we are really 40 spots below in ranking without the evergreen Chhettri!! He is amazing). The team has changed a bit with some solid players. The real proof will only come when we play a few top-125 teams.
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