Can FIFA World Rankings Be Used to Forecast World Cup Results 2010?

FIFA has a global ranking of countries since many years, the list being updated on a monthly basis. I say it gives a good idea of their national teams performance. Can this be used to forecast results? But, this is football, other factors also need to be taken into account with this world cup: managers, South Africa’s playing home despite a ranking of 83 in May 2010 vs Brazil still No.1. Other factors would be current form, the team formation and strategy, team lineup, weather conditions, referee and the players spirit!

If you check the ranking for May 2010 from this site:

http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/lastranking/gender=m/fullranking.html#confederation=0&rank=193

You’ll see that these top the list (rank, name, points)
1 Brazil 1611
2 Spain 1565
3 Portugal 1249
4 Netherlands 1231
5 Italy 1184
6 Germany 1082
7 Argentina 1076
8 England 1068
9 France 1044
10 Croatia 1041

I said, let’s try to make a forecast of the results in each group based on these rankings only. I have not followed the teams this year, so i don’t know how well each has been playing: so I’ll stick to the rankings only. If two similarly ranked teams are playing, I’ll give them a draw. If a team has barely won any match, I’ll assume that it’ll try harder in the third/last match of the group. These will give a ranking as follows:

Group A: Uruguay, South Africa (or France)
Group B: Argentina, Greece
Group C: England, Serbia
Group D: USA, Germany
Group E: Cameroon, Slovakia
Group F: Italy, Netherlands
Group G: Brazil, Chile
Group H: Spain, Portugal

I’ll skip the 8th finals, with the quarter finals as:
1. Uruguay vs Argentina
2. England vs Germany
3. Cameroon vs Italy
4. Brazil vs Spain

Well, I hope to get some half of the results correct. Then we’d have a final of Argentina/England vs Cameroon/Brazil/Spain? Argentina may be as a winner or if an African team to win…

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