Introduction
The procedure used to generate each issue of the FutsalPlanet World Futsal Ranking is similar to the one used for the Coca-Cola FIFA World Ranking, the difference being that the FutsalPlanet ranking has been specially adapted to the game of futsal. Thus, although the basic idea is the same, the parameters and data taken into account are often different.
Procedure
There are two main steps in the ranking procedure:
- Assigning a score to each match
- Taking into account the relevant matches
1. Assigning a score to each match
All the matches played within the five years preceding the ranking date are taken into account.
Each team is assigned a score for every match played; this score takes two main factors into account:
- type of result (win, draw, loss)
- goal difference
This score is then modified according to the following two criteria:
- the category of match (friendly, continental cup, World Cup qualification, World Cup finals, etc.)
- the confederation of the team concerned (each FIFA confederation has a different "weighting"; the factor is the average of the two weighting rankings of the confederations of the two teams involved).
In this way, all the teams have a score per each played match.
2. Taking into account the relevant matches
For each team, all the matches played are divided into five groups: one group per year. From the five groups, only the 10 "best" matches (most relevant matches) are taken into account and their scores are multiplied by a factor that reflects how recently the match was played (1 year previously: 1.00, 2 years previously: 0.80, etc.).
The last step is to total all the scores of relevant matches in order to obtain the final ranking score for each team.
Technology
The ranking is generated by a dedicated software package, developed by FutsalPlanet staff using a Windows OS with Visual Basic language.
